


Free Fallin'

by Sail_On



Series: Mob verse [1]
Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Mob, Coming of Age, Drugs, Dubious Consent, F/M, Gang Violence, M/M, Murder, Substance Abuse, parental neglect
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-09
Updated: 2018-12-09
Packaged: 2019-08-27 17:43:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 33,485
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16707043
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sail_On/pseuds/Sail_On
Summary: A coming of age story, in which Patrick Kane grows up, battles with addiction, neglect, violence, and tries to pick himself up only to fall down again.Or, a series of firsts.





	Free Fallin'

**Author's Note:**

> First of all, a huge thanks to [Mel](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheNorthRemembers/pseuds/TheNorthRemembers) for the concept idea and the beta job <3  
>   
> This is a story I wrote as the introduction to a bigger story about Jonny and Patrick falling in love, with no particular intention of publishing any of it, but as I wrote what is technically just Patrick's backstory, I found myself falling in love with this character and universe, so I hope that you will be able to enjoy this character study, even if the romance will only happen from the second part on. This can very much be read as a standalone, but consider it a teaser for the story in which Patrick will have made his mark in the mob already.  
>   
> Warnings are detailed in the end notes.  
>   
>  **Disclaimer:** This has very little to do with the actual Patrick Kane, who is a hockey player and obviously not a mobster, and I consider him and Jonny more inspiration in terms of looks, personality etc. This is not a story about them. I have not tagged Jason Cirone as a character because I only googled Italian hockey player names and do not know anything about him.  
>   
> I would also like to note that I have no personal experience with substance abuse or crime, and that anyone who has knowledge of any of these things might find inaccuracies, for which I apologise. I have also never been to Buffalo, Chicago, or an American university. I hope that this still makes sense as a whole from what I researched online, and that it'll be entertaining, even if some aspects end up inaccurate to the real world.  
>   
> I'll let you guess where the [title](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WfZZAn7D5U8) is from.  
>   
> If you want an idea of how I imagine Pat in this fic, let me refer you to [this gifset](http://eubiass.tumblr.com/post/181141283737/dallas41chicago88-through-out-my-career-i), which I actually found afterwards and is basically perfect. And if you need a refresher on how he looked like with [bleached hair](http://eubiass.tumblr.com/post/181141473807/mizbabygirl-lil-peekaboo-westtcoast)...  
> 

The first time Pat lies, he’s 7.

There’s this new kid in school, and unlike the other ones who all know that Pat’s mom is an alcoholic and Pat’s dad can’t find a job for the life of him, he thinks Pat is this, like, _cool_ kid.

It’s different from first grade, where Pat was normal. Where Pat was just the kid with the messed up parents. They’re all poor, in this neighbourhood, and it’s public school, so coming to class with mismatched clothes and second-hand sneakers that have definitely seen better days is common ground. If a kid has a new watch, it’s the main attraction for most of recess.

Pat doesn’t so much stand out because of that, even if his school lunches are never home cooked. There’s kids that don’t eat lunch at all, some days. Like Tara. Or Ollie. But Pat’s dad is depressed, official doctor’s note, even if he’s still trying to hide it from Pat and Erica like they haven’t overheard it when Mom and Aunt Nia were talking in the kitchen. Dad has depression so he can’t work. Pat and Erica think that depression means there’s something wrong with Dad’s head that makes him sad and angry sometimes, and that make it hard for him to get out of bed, but he can’t afford to pay for the medication.

Pat’s mom drinks because Dad has depression, and that’s okay, except that sometimes Pat and Erica have to help her join Dad in bed because she can’t walk straight anymore, and it’s hard. She’s really big and they’re still small, even if Pat likes feeling like his mom can rely on him. He doesn’t think his friends at school have to buy their own lunches before school. But Mom is at work all day and at night she’s too tired to prepare lunch for the next day. At least Dad being home means he can take care of Jessie and Jackie. Most of the time. Sometimes he asks Pat and Erica to play with them because he’s tired, so Pat doesn’t have the time to do his homework.

Those are all things that the kids at school know, because they’re neighbours, because they’ve all grown up together. And Aaron likes to make fun or Pat because _his_ mom makes him really nice lunch boxes, sometimes even pancakes. He munches them in front of Pat, while Pat eats salted crackers that make him thirsty despite not having a drink. And there’s Alicia and Eddie who think it’s funny to say Pat’s dad is crazy in the head, which is _not true_ and makes Pat cry in front of everyone the first time they start pointing at him and sing-songing “Crazy brains like his dad, crazy brains like his dad”.

That was when Pat was 6, but he’s grown up now, and Erica’s in school with him, so he has to protect her. And this new kid in his class thinks he’s cool because he lent him some gum the first day. So Pat lies to him. Grins really broadly when the kid – Auston – starts talking about how his mom is a cashier and sometimes brings sweets home with her, and how his dad is a pilot and he’s never home but it’s still super cool because he gets to fly in _planes_.

“My dad is actually in the mob,” Pat tells him like it’s a secret. “He’s a super powerful crime boss, and it’s super dangerous, so you can’t tell anyone. They all think he’s sick because he doesn’t want the police to catch him.”

Auston gets this really amazed look on his face, glancing over his shoulder with wide eyes in case someone is listening on their conversation, and then leans closer to Pat to whisper, “Your dad’s a _criminal_?”

Pat nods, very seriously. “An important one. He’s so rich my mom doesn’t even have to make us lunch, and we get to _buy_ it every day.”

Auston looks practically breathless. “Wicked.”

Pat’s really proud of that one, and Auston believes him for a whole three months before he even starts questioning Pat’s word. Some of the kids make fun of Pat’s dad for being sick again, and Auston even defends Pat. Like they’re friends. Pat thinks he should tell stories about his family more often if that’ll get him more friends. Soon, there’s a rumour going around school, about Pat’s dad, and how scary slash awesome he apparently is. It’s great. Pat feels on top of the world. The other kids think _he_ ’s scary slash awesome now.

Well, expect for Alicia, who still thinks he’s lame, but Eddie doesn’t dare making fun of him anymore, in case Pat’s dad comes to kill them as punishment. Erica doesn’t understand why Pat is telling people stories, but Erica is tiny, and Pat obviously knows better. He gets her to play along, and everyone treats her like she’s awesome too, which is an added bonus, because his little sister only ever deserves the best. Pat even starts making up more stories, that he sells like they’re secrets in exchange for party invitations or shared snacks at recess.

Until the cops come knocking at their door because Alicia’s mom reported them.

That’s when Pat realises that maybe he shouldn’t have made it sound like his dad is a crime lord. Because the cops break down the front door, search the house, and snatch Dad’s meds that they managed to afford this month. For “evidence” one of them says. All because no one came to the door quick enough and they’re angry. Pat hides in the next room, peeking around the corner at the tall, scary men that he’s learnt to be wary of because of how many bad stories they’re in. They took Ollie’s dad away. They beat up Jason’s older brother.

There’s a lot of talking, between the cops and Pat’s parents. They all have these lines on their faces that adults get when they’re having Serious Conversations. It doesn’t usually mean anything good. And then one of the cops says something that has Mom walk out of the room, towards Pat, and grab his arm without a word.

Pat yelps, because it hurts, but he gets dragged in front of the police anyway, heart beating so hard he thinks he might cry. He’s scared. He’s so scared that they’re going to take him away now, or hit him because he lied, and good boys don’t lie. He stares up at the police officers, feeling small and scared and wanting to get away because his mom’s hand is still tight around his bicep like she thinks he’ll run away.

“Please don’t take my dad away,” he says, bottom lip wobbling.

One of the cops rolls his eyes.

“Pat,” Mom says shortly. “One of your classmates told her parents that Dad is a mobster. What do you have to say about that?”

Pat just starts crying then, heavy, ugly sobs that shake his body, and he has to tell the cops that he made it up, that people were making fun of him in school because Dad is sick. “I’m sorry, I lied, I’m sorry,” he hiccups.

The cops laugh like it’s funny. Pat wants to crawl into a ball, wants these strange, mean men out of his house. He hates them, and how condescending they are, and the shiny guns at their belts that they shoot people with. He hates that they took Ollie’s dad away and now Ollie doesn’t have any lunch to eat. Mom lets go of his arm, talks to the cops instead. They’re writing down stuff, and saying big words that Pat doesn’t know. Then they leave, tell Dad that he should get a better grip on his family.

As soon as they’re gone, he goes to kick the wall, feeling helpless and angry. And scared. There are tears, still wet and sticky on his face, but Mom and Dad don’t care, just like the cops didn’t. So Pat feels like it’s all too much on the inside. He doesn’t understand, still. Doesn’t know if they’re going to come back to punish them. Take Dad, take Pat. Take Erica, even, because Pat made Erica lie for him. He’s the worst older brother in the entire world.

“Why’d you do that, son?” Dad asks, tiredness heavy on his voice.

“It’s not _fair_ ,” Pat says.

His cheeks are burning, throat dry. He keeps kicking the wall, doesn’t look at Mom or Dad. He wants to go, but he doesn’t think he’s allowed yet. He _has_ to be here, _has_ to have a dad with depression, and kids at school that are mean, and he has to be good too, but he _can’t_. He doesn’t want to be good. He wants to be happy and have friends, and nothing is okay.

“Pat,” Mom says sternly. “You can’t lie to people. Dad could have gone to jail for this.”

Pat lets out a sob. “I _hate_ them,” he says. “And I hate _you_.”

“Pat-“ Mom says warningly, so Pat turns around again.

“I _hate_ you,” he repeats. “Everyone makes fun of me all the time because Dad is _crazy_.”

Dad just looks stricken, paling like he might _cry_ , because yeah. Pat’s learnt that in school too, from everyone else, that boys aren’t supposed to cry, but Dad does it all the time, and that’s not normal, he knows that. Nothing Dad does is normal.

Mom looks furious, though, and before Pat can react any more, she’s grabbed him by the arm again, the one that’s already throbbing from before, and he’s being yanked upstairs, to his room. It hurts a lot. Pat kicks and cries and fights it, but when Mom isn’t drunk, she’s stronger than him, and she half-throws him onto his bed.

Erica is sitting on hers, on the other side of the room, and she looks up with wide, scared eyes. Pat grabs the first thing that passes under his hands – a pillow – and throws it at Mom.

“That’s _enough_ ,” Mom snaps. “Pat, you’re staying in your room tonight. No dinner, no TV. Erica, come with me.”

“I hate you,” Pat yells, but he doesn’t try to run away.

Where would he even go? He watches Mom take Erica’s hand and lead her out of the room, and then he screams into his pillow. They don’t understand anything. They’re not small like him, they aren’t powerless. And if they think that Pat is going to stop lying because they told him so, they’re really fricking wrong. He’ll show them. Show them that he can fool the entire fricking world and get away with it. Next time.

When he passes out on his bed, later, drained by the crying and feeling too much, he still doesn’t know if the police is going to come back for him or not.

 

~~~

 

The first time Pat steals, he’s 10.

Dad lost his job at the call centre 3 months ago, and Mom’s pay isn’t enough to account for rising prices and 4 growing kids. Sometimes Pat wants to ask why they chose to have this many. They clearly can’t afford it. But Erica is 9 and she’s his best friend, and Jessie is 7, makes everyone around her laugh with her terrible made up jokes, and Jackie is going to be 6 soon, going to start primary school, and Pat really would trade her for anything in the world. Not even a better little sister who cried less.

Jackie’s everyone’s favourite anyway, even Mom and Dad’s because she’s the last, and she’s sweet and pretty, with brown shiny hair like Mom. Pat’s the only one with the unruly curls, the only one with the blonde hair, the only boy, the troublesome kid whose teachers write home every other week. He’s hyperactive, and it’s not jokes he makes up, it’s stories. Stories he spins and tries to feed his classmates, sometimes his parents. His friends at school think he has a dog, and an older brother in the army, and they think he steals half of the things he owns.

He’s the cool kids with the stories now, not the kid with the sick dad, because Alicia changed schools. He hasn’t _actually_ stolen before, doesn’t have a dog, doesn’t have a brother.

But he’s hungry all the time, because he’s growing, because he can’t stay still. And Tara and Ollie are hungry too. So stealing is something he’s actually considered, on top of lying to his friends about it. Pat’s lunch is being shared between Jessie and Erica, and he noticed Tara practically breathing in her two slices of margarine bread. It’s only natural, after making up different ways of how he’d supposedly done it over and over again, to decide that they’re just all going to get the lunch that they’re missing out on. He’s _providing_.

“I’m going to get us some food,” he tells them, and Ollie eyes him suspiciously.

“Don’t be late for class,” Tara says, throwing a balled-up paper towel at him.

Pat just ducks the towel before flashing them both his brightest smile.

“I would never,” he says cheekily, and then he’s off jumping the school fence.

That’s something he’s used to by now, knows the best spot where the tree on the other side has a thick enough branch poking through the fence has to offer a foot rest for him to propel himself over the top. When he does, he lets out a single whoop, stomach looping when he jumps down. It’s fun. More fun than staying cooped up in a classroom, or outside watching his friends look for crumbs at the bottom of their lunch boxes.

He would have taken them along, too, if he didn’t know Ollie can’t get into trouble without risking a beating from his mom. And Tara would just be all nervous. It’s best if he does it on his own, with no one to see that he’s completely new to this. The secret to a good lie is not to get caught on it after all. Like how the golden chain around his neck is a gift from his grandma, not something he stole out of Target, like he told Ollie and Tara, and he definitely didn’t get chased out by security, parkouring between the buildings until he lost them.

Hopefully, that lie isn’t about to come true right now either. He doesn’t want to get caught.

His wariness of cops has only increased over the years. Living in a pretty mixed neighbourhood and all that. Don’t trust the cops, don’t call the cops, that’s pretty much common knowledge. Especially for dark kids like Ollie. Tara’s Italian so it’s a little better, but her parents have accents, and that’s something that cops don’t like either.

Pat ends up at the nearest supermarket, hoping that he’ll be able to pass incognito in a bigger store. For all that he’s thought about this and pretended he’d already stolen from a store before, he’s still shit-scared as he goes in. His heart is beating at a thousand miles an hour and his stomach might very well be digesting itself. He’s a thousand percent sure that anyone that looks at him will be able to read on his face how guilty he feels.

He roams through the aisles, feeling everyone’s eyes on him, forcing himself to look like he’s checking out candy. Because he does know how to act innocent. He has a plan ready – buy something small, so he doesn’t look suspicious leaving the store without anything, and hide the rest of it inside his pockets. Or backpack. It should work, as long as they don’t, like, check his bag. The cashiers know him, so they don’t have a reason to question him. This is where he buys his school lunches.

But also, the cashiers _know_ him. If they catch him stealing, he’s screwed.

He thinks about Tara looking sadly at her empty lunchbox, listens to his stomach rumbling. Thinks that it’s okay, he’s young, has blue eyes and blonde curls. He _looks_ innocent. Sure, his teachers have long given up believing that about him, but. But surely nobody is going to suspect him.

Quickly, he grabs two bars of chocolate and stuffs them inside his jacket. It’s a work day, so the store isn’t too full, and Pat sticks his hands into his pockets, moving onto the next row. At the refrigerated section, he grabs three sandwiches, and since there’s people around, he keeps them out in the open, looking around until he finds an empty aisle. There, he slides the sandwiches in his backpack. He zips it back up, repeats the process with two cans of Arizona iced tea.

He’s sure people are looking at him weird. At least one of the older ladies is. His heart is beating in his ears. Forcing himself to not run, he searches around until he finds a pack of gum, and then he files into the queue for check-out. The cashier today is one of the younger ones. He doesn’t know her name, but she’s nice, and he likes her smile. He feels awful for stealing from her.

“Oh, hey Pat,” she says, smiling, and him, and it’s a good thing Pat is so used to lying and fronting, because he thinks that otherwise he might break and give up everything to her.

“Gum, please,” he says instead, flashing his teeth at her, and she laughs.

“Yessir,” she salutes, beeping his gum over the machine thing. “That’ll be 1.21.”

Scrambling, Pat digs into his pockets for money, because right. Money. He gets a one dollar bill on the counter, and then panics, because- because he can’t find any more pennies. Or bills for that matter. He thinks he had some before, but he pats down both of his pockets, as well as the back ones, and- nothing. He wants to curse. Say fuck even if Mom would hit his fingers for it. He feels halfway to crying, with his stolen food in his bag and not even more than one dollar bill for his cover-up purchase.

“Hey, I’ve got you,” the cashier says, and Pat’s eyes dart back to her, a little frantic. She’s smiling indulgently. “It’s just twenty cents. Don’t worry about it.”

“Oh,” Pat says, voice small.

She really shouldn’t, he thinks. Also, _thank god_.

“Oh, thanks a lot-“ His eyes flicker to her nametag briefly. He doesn’t think she notices. “Thanks, Audrey. Sorry.”

He gives her a thankful, sheepish sort of smile, and she winks at him. “No problem. Have a good day.”

Pat nods automatically. “Yeah, you too.”

Then he’s out of there, feeling like he’s just run a marathon. He definitely didn’t deserve that kindness, but isn’t he glad for it. His cheeks are burning in the cool air outside.

When he checks his watch, he has 15 minutes of lunch break left. He starts running.

“Food,” he declares when he’s jumped the fence again and plopped back down in front of Tara and Ollie.

“Food?” Tara echoes, one eyebrow raised. Then Pat opens his bag, and she cheers. “Food.”

They both take the sandwiches Pat hands them without question and unwrap the plastic. Pat does the same, adrenaline still thrumming through his veins, laced with the elation of winning. Because he got away with it. He actually got away with it. He got them food and he paid one dollar for all of it. He’s the king of the frigging world.

“Where’d you even get that from?” Ollie asks, and Pat grins obnoxiously around his sandwich.

“From the store of course,” he says. “By paying with money.”

One dollar, to be exact.

Ollie rolls his eyes at him. The chocolate is all melted from resting inside his jacket by the time they get to it, but it’s still the best meal Pat has had in a long while.

 

~~~

 

The first time Pat is arrested, he’s 13.

It’s been over a year since Mom sent Pat out to do groceries for her without giving him money for it for the first time. He’d stolen what she wanted, brought it home, and when she’d noticed afterwards that she hadn’t given him anything to pay it with, she’d cut herself off in the middle of her sentence. Mouth tight, eyes blazing like every time she blames herself for what little she can provide.

“It’s fine,” Pat had said, quiet.

 _I’ve only gotten caught three times, and I ducked punishment every time_ , he’d thought.

“It’s not right,” Mom had said.

The next time she’d given Pat a grocery list and nothing else, refusing to meet his eyes.

Pat has learnt at what times to shop, has known always to buy things with real money, either while he was stealing, or between two shopping trips, so the cashiers don’t spot him as the kid that never buys anything. He’s learnt to bat his eyelashes and look innocent when they catch him red-handed, make use of his age and whiteness, promise it won’t happen again, it was just, my little sister is hungry…

He’s also started asking around for ways to make money at school.

It’s middle school, still public, still with a lot of the same kids he went to first grade with, and most kids know how to pickpocket, how to skip class, roll a joint. Pat smokes with Tara sometimes, even if it made him cough at first. It’s nice, it makes him feel relaxed. Makes him feel grown-up.

And that’s where the idea comes from. One of the kids he buys weed from with today’s grocery money offers him 25% of the money if he distributes his stash. Pat squints at him. Says 50%. And ends up with a bag of week pressed into his hand, to sell before the end of the week. Because dealing drugs isn’t something there’s an age restriction on, unlike the legal stuff. Pat thinks to himself that really, if they wanted people to follow the law, they should give them legal ways not to starve. But whatever.

It’s just weed, nothing really bad, and Pat doesn’t think he’d get in _too_ much trouble for it either. He’s barely 13.

As it turns out, he’s good at it too. Smiling at people, making it sound like a fun idea, cracking jokes with other school kids before selling them the grass. The awkwardness of the first couple of times is gone soon enough. He learns that by a 50% share, Jason meant 50% of what _he_ gets, which is definitely not the entire money that he collects, but that’s okay, because Pat joins Jason when he gives the money to his provider – some tall kid who’s definitely not a middle schooler – and hits him up.

He gets a good deal out of it too, can sell his own stashes, weed and crack, and Tara seems kind of put off by it, but he buys her cool sunglasses with the money he’s made and she shuts up about it. Ollie quietly points out that Pat might end up in prison, but he also buys crack from Pat and they smoke it together after class, so he can’t talk.

He likes the rush of it. The rush of the drugs themselves, the rush of the transaction, charming people into relaxing with him, the rush of doing something forbidden. He likes that he can buy Jessie a new bathing suit for her swimming class, and that Jackie has come to associate him with bars of chocolate, squealing whenever he comes home with his hands hidden behind his back. Mom never asks where he gets the money from. She probably thinks he’s still stealing. Dad doesn’t notice anything.

It’s the summer before his 14th birthday that Pat gets caught by the cops, who step out of the corner the second he hands over the few grams of weed, wrapped tightly in plastic foil, to this girl who’s in 8th grade already. She freezes like a deer in the headlights. Pat considers running. One look at the length of the taller cop’s legs dissuades him however, and he knows that if he wants to get away easy, his only way is to comply and smile.

It sucks that they’ve seen the transaction, though, because they search his bag and find both the remaining weed and a few packets of hash at the bottom of it. It’s pretty fucking clear who the dealer is, here. Pat bites his lips, tries to look innocent.

They still take him to the station.

They try to get him to snitch on who’s giving him the drugs, but Pat just blinks innocently at them and insists that he doesn’t know how they even got in his bag. Makes up a story on the spot. How Daisy, the girl he’d been selling to, asked when he’d mentioned it to her, but this is his first time selling anything to anyone, and he’d only done it for the thrill of it. He would have taken the rest of what he found to the station afterwards, obviously. The cops look unimpressed. Pat guesses that swearing he won’t do it again isn’t quite enough this time.

His mom is working, so they call home, get Dad to come pick him up.

There’s talk of probation, his mom yelling at him, promising that she’ll send Erica to do the groceries from now on. Dad promising he’ll look harder for a new job. Erica and Jackie both crying while Jessie watches them with wide eyes. Pat crying, too, because he can’t stand the way everyone is looking at him. Like he’s done something horrible.

“I was just trying to _help_ ,” he says, but Mom just shakes her head.

It’s not even a lie, but she doesn’t care.

“I won’t do it again,” Pat swears.

He means it.

 

~~~

 

The first time Pat goes to prison, he’s 14.

Or, well. Not prison prison. Juvie. For drug possession. Repeated offense.

It’s not that he hadn’t meant to stop. Probation had meant 6 months of monitoring with random drug tests every couple weeks. Like he couldn’t have been dealing without consuming the drugs. He had, sure, but he could have… not. Done that. But then they’d also blood tested him when they’d first taken him in, and while he hadn’t been high _then_ he’d definitely smoked with Ollie the previous day. So it’s not completely unwarranted, as much as Pat likes to pretend to be offended.

The first week of probation had been surprisingly hard. Pat’s hands had itched with the need to seek out someone who could give him some crack. Just for a quick smoke. But It’d been more of a general unease, like a craving for chocolate, and it had gone away.

“You’re lucky you only got probation,” Ollie had said quietly

The first time he’d smoked in front of Pat, Pat had stood up and walked away, plain and simple. He couldn’t deal. But then Ollie had promised not to smoke in front of him, and Tara had too. She’d taught them some Italian. Pat had taught them some sick dance moves he and Erica had made up. Ollie had taught them how to sew. All in all some pretty varied talents. Pat had even done his homework on time and put in some effort in school.

The teachers had all agreed he was smart and could go far if he only dedicated himself to it.

Then the six months had been over, and Tara and Ollie and Marc had all stopped trying not to smoke in front of him, and they’d celebrated with booze and weed, because Tara didn’t touch crack. Or any kind of hard drug. Pat’s pretty sure Ollie and Marc had both tried other forms of cocaine, and even oxy, just for the fun of it.

They’d been happy and relaxed, and Pat had made out with Tara because he’d figured why not? She was a girl, he liked her. That’s a thing that was probably meant to happen by now. She’d giggled, though, and pushed him away. And he’d been- surprisingly okay with that. An underwhelming experience, really. He couldn’t really see the big deal with kissing. He’d reached for his beer instead, while Tara had crawled into Ollie’s lap. Okay then.

“Okay then,” he'd laughed as they made out, exchanging amused looks with Marc.

Maybe they should pair up, he’d thought. Had considered kissing Marc while Ollie and Tara did their thing. But when he’d leaned in towards Marc after wiggling his eyebrows at him Marc had made a grossed out noise and pushed him away too. Both of them laughing, like Pat had just been joking. Pat hadn’t really been sure if he had been, but he’d figured that if kissing had been boring the first time around, it probably would be the second too. It didn’t matter that he hadn’t gotten to test it out.

Jerking off later that night – under the shower, before getting back into his and Erica’s bedroom – his brain had definitely disagreed, presenting a series of very interesting arguments about why kissing Marc would have been better than Tara. Like the way his lips had been shiny from the alcohol, and how his pupils had been so dilated that Pat could probably lose himself in them. Drunk brains and all that. Probably because Tara was his friend and more like a sister.

Pat had figured that spending more time with Marc might result in the same, so he’d hung out with him more. Smoked with him, from time to time, always borrowing money or asking to share a joint, until it’d become so ridiculous that Pat had looked into earning some for himself yet again.

Just a little bit of money, to spend on nights out with his friends.

And while he was at it maybe buy his sisters things again, as long as they didn’t notice much. Because Pat had been pretty fucking aware that Erica would see any present from him with a really suspicious eye. His parents sure as hell couldn’t find out. They’d crucify him for it. Or, well. Mom would. Probably. Even if she’d been working 7 days a week and drinking at night when she’d gotten back. Dad had found a job too, so they were keeping afloat. But only just.

So Pat had started dealing again. Just occasionally, when there was a lack of dealers. He hadn’t been one of the regulars or anything.

It had still been enough.

Enough to get him back into smoking, drinking, and only paying enough attention to school so his parents wouldn’t notice. Not that they’d noticed much.

Enough to get him caught shoplifting in the middle of a cocaine high, some of it still in his pocket.

Which, granted, doesn’t count as one of the smartest things Pat had done. He ends up at the station again, with Ollie and Marc this time, right about around the time that the rush is crashing down. Rests his head between his hands. And reconsiders all of the failings in his life.

He really fucked up. _Really_ fucked up. It’s Ollie and Marc’s first times getting caught with drugs, but the added layer of the shoplifting, they might get a harsher first sentence than Pat had that first time around. Especially since neither of them are white. Pat has hung out with too many coloured kids not to know that that’s a factor too. The fact that they’d split the stolen items between themselves had seemed smart in the moment, but now there’s proof that all of them were shoplifting, and just- Pat should just have taken all of the stuff inside his own bag instead.

Pat sort of wants to die. He knows that part of that is the cocaine low, but it’s not just that. It’s his parents. His sisters. Tara. Everyone being disappointed with him again, because this time, this time he didn’t even have a good excuse. He didn’t do it to buy his family food. He did for himself. To get high, to be with his friends. Nothing selfless there to be found to help his case. And god, it’d been bad enough when it had been his first offense, and he _had_ been trying to help his family.

“Janie’s gonna kill me,” Marc wails, and Pat blinks up at him blearily.

“Janie?”

“My girlfriend. I’d agreed to-“

Pat shuts Marc out after girlfriend. Lets him drone on without listening. He drops his face again. Just fucking great. Everything is so fucking great. And now one of his closest friends has a girlfriend and hasn’t told him and that- that’s what Pat is mad about. It’s like Ollie and Tara, who spend more time together and less with him now.

Not that it matters. Because he’s probably going to prison. Then he won’t have to worry about seeing his friends too. Unless they all get sent together, to the same place, but he doubts everything will work out that well.

“Maybe we’ll share a room in juvie,” he mumbles, voice croaky.

“Oh god,” Ollie says, like he’s only just realising that that’s a possibility.

Pat doesn’t look at him. Doesn’t look at anyone.

They get to stay together awaiting their trial, at a juvenile detention centre that Pat hates from the very beginning. It’s only for a few days, though, and then there’s the hearing, longer than the last time, because there’s three of them. Pat wonders if they’re allowed to interrogate the three of them at the same time. Probably, since they’re the law. There’s a lot of things in the law that Pat disagrees with, after all. This one thing is just a weird circumstance.

They’re 14, the court reminds them. Like that’s news to anyone. Pat wonders how long his age is going to stay something that people say as an excuse, instead of an accusation. He doesn’t bother lying about what happened, other than pretending it’s his first time taking drugs since his last conviction. They run tests. They don’t believe him. He’s sweating and pale from withdrawal already. He thinks that lying under oath is something that contributes to hardening his sentence in the end.

Except that he still gets less than Ollie, somehow. Ollie, who they decided is the “leader” of their group. And who has to do six months in juvie, against Pat’s five. Marc only gets 3. Maybe his skin is light enough. Maybe they think he’s prettier than Ollie and like him more because of that. Pat doesn’t really know. The justice system is probably just really fucked up. He’s starting to think that this isn’t really about justice at all.

Marc ends up in a different facility than Pat and Ollie, and Pat feels kind of bad for him, kind of vindictive, because Marc probably won’t miss him at all. Since he doesn’t bother telling his friends about his girlfriends. So Pat spends some time with Ollie, which is fine too. Other than the awful school, with too-strict rules and hateful teachers.

And the withdrawal.

That part is bad.

But there’s guys in juvie that Pat makes friends with – most of them, really, because if there’s one thing he’s good at, it’s making friends. And Ollie doesn’t entirely approve of everyone Pat hangs out with, but hey, they’re all stuck in the same hell and Pat doesn’t discriminate. He loves all of his bros equally, because he’s great like that.

It’s good, really, that he makes new friends. Sure comes in handy when he gets out of juvie. Because when he steps back into his parents’ house, he’s met with closed faces and tight mouths. With Mom saying she can’t stand caring for a sick husband, her kids, and a delinquent at the same time. Dad jumping and sending Mom a hurt look. Erica leaning in in the doorway, watching the scene and not saying anything. Not helping at all.

“You’re throwing me out?” Pat croaks.

He’s 15 now, celebrated his birthday in juvie, and he thinks he can legally make money without sending his employers to jail, but. But. He watches his parents with wide eyes, clutching his bag to his chest. He’d expected a lot of things – disappointment, tears, yelling, hitting even, but not this. Not getting kicked out of his parents’ house for doing drugs.

“We can’t trust that it won’t happen again,” Dad says gently, like there’s any way to soften the blow. “And the lawyer fees- Twice already-“

“We don’t have the energy _or_ the money to support you right now,” Mom says, and she _does_ look sorry.

Pat just feels cold.

“I-“ he says, then stops, lost. He doesn’t have anything. A couple books in his bag, a change of clothes, a notebook they made him write in in juvie. His coat is barely warm enough for the amount of snow there’s outside. He has a wallet, but it’s empty. When he blinks up at his parents, his eyes are filled with tears. “Please,” he says. “Please don’t kick me out.”

“I’m sorry Patrick,” Mom says, a single tear running down her cheek. Pat watches it roll down and drip from her chin.

“You’ve got to get yourself back together, son,” Dad says. “But we’ll be happy to have you back as soon as that’s the case, yeah? As soon as that.”

Pat looks at Erica, still in the door. Silent, avoiding his eyes. He lets out a sob. Then another. Wipes the snot away with his sleeve. Then he pivots on his heels and is out of the door before any of them can try to make themselves feel more justified in their decision to kick out their teenage son in January. Before they can insist any more that really they’re the good guys. That they’re letting him off easy.

That they love him.

When Pat gets to the next intersection, he sits down in the snow, hugging his knees to his chest, and cries until he feels like he’s going to throw up.

Then he finds a public phone booth, and tweaks with it long enough that he gets it to work, somehow. And calls his friends.

 

~~~

 

The first time Pat gets a tattoo, he’s 15.

He’s been staying with Kev for a couple months now. Kev and his parents, who were happy to open their home to Pat when they’d found out he’d become friends with Kev in juvie and gotten kicked out by his parents upon coming back.

He’s still in Buffalo, still goes to school, even if it’s farther away it than his parents’ house had been, because he realises, to some extent, that if he drops out of school now, he’s never getting back up. This is his one and only way to somehow be a functioning member of society by the time he’s 18. Erica still goes to the same school as him, and when she first tries to talk to Pat after he gets kicked out, he turns his back to her and refuses to say a single word.

The same as her when Mom and Dad decided they didn’t want him anymore, he can’t help but think bitterly.

He feels awful about it afterwards, of course, even if he thinks she deserves it, and he holds out for a total of four days before he gives in and takes her into his arms, sobbing. She pets his hair, tells him that she’s so, so sorry, that she hates Mom and Dad now, that she wants him back. It doesn’t change anything, but it feels better, and Pat tells her to hug Jessie and Jackie from him too, to tell them that Pat loves them and thinks about them.

He still sees Tara, and Marc, and Ollie too, when he comes back to school after juvie, one month after Pat, but Pat feels like there’s a wedge between them now. He thinks Tara blames him for dragging Ollie into this, even if she doesn’t want to admit that. So Pat’s silent, silent in his anger and sadness, because they don’t want his problems on top of everything else.

After school he walks the 45 minutes it takes to get back to Kev’s place because he doesn’t have money for the bus, and then he goes out with Kev and his friends, who don’t think he’s trouble. On the contrary, they ask him for stories about juvie, about dealing, and what he did to get in, and how many times he managed to steal before getting caught. Pat tells them about all the times he managed to charm his way out of it and they roar with laughter.

There’s Kev, and Dom, and Jamal, who are Pat’s age, but sometimes there’s older boys too, and Pat thinks they might be in a gang, but he doesn’t really care at first. He just hangs out with them, throws rocks at passing cars, makes fun of them when they talk about girls, because it’s not like any of the guys his age ever hang out with girls.

They’re all hanging on his lips when he tells them on of his best friends used to be a girl, and he kind of plays up the part where he kissed her once to possibly more than that. A lot more than that. Providing details when asked, even if his knowledge about sex is really, really limited. They believe it, so whatever. They don’t need to know she’s his only kiss and he didn’t even like it. Pat’s not about to talk about questioning his sexuality to boys who make gay jokes every three seconds.

He’s not even sure that he’s not straight.

It’s probably all just because Tara was like a sister to him anyway.

Either way, he ends up making friend with not only Kev, but a bunch of Kev’s friends. Even the older ones seem to like him. So when Chiron – who’s 18 and has really nice arms – asks Pat how he feels about making some money on the side, Pat isn’t surprised. He’s seen enough of the people around him coming and going to know that drug dealing is even heavier in this area of town than where he goes to school, and that’s already pretty high up.

And sometimes some of the guys have bruises and cuts across their faces. A lot of them at once. Like there was a group fight.

So yeah, Pat isn’t surprised that they’re in a gang, and he doesn’t really have anything to lose at this point by saying yes. He doesn’t want to alienate the people that he’s living with (even if he thinks Kev’s parents don’t actually know their son is in a gang), and it sounds nice, to be in a group for once. Even if there’ll be some fighting. Pat doesn’t really know how to fight, but that’s something he can probably learn.

And as it turns out, the first taste of fighting – of a beating – he gets is actually part of the initiation. And he doesn’t have to do anything. They call it “jumping in”, and it consists of him getting beat up by like, half the gang. Just to test his limits and motivation, or something. They don’t pretend it’s not happening either, so it’s not some surprise they spring on him. It’s part of the deal. Pat still agrees. He wants to prove to them that he’s just as tough as them, that he deserves to be part of that group.

He even manages not to cry while it’s happening. Just take the beating. Close his eyes, think that it’ll be over, and hope that no one will actually break anything. He tries to stay upright, too, but that’s something that goes down the drain as soon as a fist connects with his stomach, causing him to literally fold in two. Fall to his knees.

They don’t let him get up either, and by the time they’re done, Pat can barely open one eye, and everything hurts. He didn’t feel any cracking, and when he tries to wiggle his fingers and toes everything seems to still be moving. Which is good, he notes, before passing out.

Kev tells him he did a good job afterwards, loyally, and Pat grins, before wincing because _ow_. His face hurts. Kev’s mom patched him up, after they told her some story about Pat getting beat up behind a dumpster, but it’s still got to heal.

And then there’s the tattoo. A lot of the guys have tattoos. Chiron has both arms full of tattoos, and Pat can see them move with his muscles, sometimes. It makes him want- want the same thing. Tattoos. Which is good, because another part of joining a gang is getting a tattoo. Of the gang sign. Pat doesn’t think he’ll be staying here his entire life, or anything, but he figures that he won’t mind the reminder when he leaves, and he’s kind of excited about such a physical proof that he’s part of the group.

The tattoo itself isn’t actually that great, because it’s homemade, by one of the older guys, on his bed, and it’s just a simple circle-sort-of-celtic-looking-thing with EAST written in the middle in blocky letters. But they put it on Pat’s arm, and it shifts over his muscles when he flexes, alone in Kev’s room, afterwards. Not that he has nearly as much muscle as most of the other guy. But he trusts that that’s something that’s going to happen, and he’s- he’s excited. It’s probably all illegal as hell, but he’s already down that road, so who cares.

 

~~~

 

The first time Pat gets into a fight, he’s 15.

This time it’s not just Pat getting beat up. This time Pat actually hits back.

It’s him and Jamal at their corner, waiting for kids to buy drugs from them, when suddenly there’s a group of three dudes who are definitely members from another gang and shouldn’t fucking be here. Walking towards them. And Pat knows that they’re supposed to beat them up and send them away, but there’s three of them and they’re all taller than Jamal and him. They’re not exactly at the border of the territory, it’s not them this sort of encounter is supposed to happen to. Sure, their territory is small, but Jamal and Pat are 15, they don’t get put on beat-up duty on their own.

Jamal frowns towards the group, before promptly turning to Pat, whose pulse is going a thousand miles an hour. He’s still nursing some sore places from the beat in, and he knows that these guys won’t stop at broken bones. It’s bad.

“Gonna call backup,” Jamal hisses. “Come on.”

He grabs Pat’s arm roughly, directs him around a corner. Then he pulls out his phone, nodding for Pat to watch the guys. Pat does, pretending to lean against the wall. If he had a phone to type away on, that would help look busy, he thinks, but he doesn’t, so he just tries to look bored instead, in case he’s spotted. Jamal’s talking quick, in a hushed voice, and thankfully the strangers keep walking straight by, ignoring Pat standing against the wall. Pat doesn’t look at any of them for too long, so none take offense. In these parts, people don’t like being stared at.

For now that is, because those fuckers have no business being here, he knows. He doesn’t actually _want_ to hit them, but it’s the rules, and they know it as well as Pat does, so it’s happening. As soon as they have enough backup. Pat gives Jamal an urgent look, because they’re about to lose the guys from sight, and Jamal curses, quickly reporting to whoever he has on the phone. Probably Mikey.

“We gotta hold them up,” Jamal tells Pat, and Pat makes a face at him, wide-eyed in a way that should convey exactly how crazy he thinks that is.

They’re two 15 year-olds against three twenty year olds. Yeah no, no way that’s ending in anything but a massacre. But Jamal just shrugs, hanging up. He doesn’t look too happy either, a little pale and sweating. Still, he says, “There’ll be someone in 10,” and then he’s giving Pat a shove. “Won’t be the first time we’re volunteering to get beat up. Come on.”

“Oh my god,” Pat whines.

Ten minutes is okay. It’s doable. Maybe he can even hold up the guys by like, talking to them. Instead of provoking a fight. Talking is a thing he’s good at supposedly. He gives Jamal a look, following him out of their corner and out into the street, where they take long steps towards the group that’s already moving away from them.

“Let me talk first,” he whispers, and Jamal frowns like he doesn’t understand, so Pat will just have to trust that he won’t, like, charge at the guys.

“Hey, Millicent,” he calls out.

Millicent Corner are their main rival, and they’re the closest too, so Pat hopes it’s them. It’s not like he actually knows their faces. He’s only lived here for like, five months. Still, he’s fairly sure. Thankfully, when they turn around, they look menacing, not confused. That means that he probably didn’t get it wrong. Now as to keep them busy for ten minutes.

“You _are_ Millicent, right?” he asks.

“What do you want, blondie?” Dude 1 asks. The one in the middle, probably the leader of their little operation.

Pat grins at them, all teeth, pretends that he isn’t shit-scared. The one good part about the power disadvantage here, is that they probably don’t see Pat and Jamal as a threat. Pat doesn’t actually _want_ to be seen as a threat right now.

“Wicked,” Pat says. “Are you here on official Millicent business? Like, Rakim told you to come here?” Pat might not know everyone from Millicent, but he does know their boss’s name.

Dude 1 looks irritated, like Pat’s a fly he sort of wants to crush under his sole. But also like he can’t be bothered. Which Pat absolutely appreciates. He doesn’t really want to get crushed like a bug, and Dude 1 _could_ probably crush Pat if he wanted. He also doesn’t quite know where to go with this, mind spinning a thousand miles an hour in an attempt to come up with something to say that’ll keep the guys from just turning around and walking out on them.

“None of your fucking business,” Dude 2 snaps.

“Hey now,” Pat says, raising both hands appeasingly. “I’m not saying anything yet. Just gotta know cause Mikey’s been wanting to get his hands on one of you guys, and-“ He pauses, laughing like he’s correcting himself. “Not like that. I mean probably too, but. You know how it is, you’re the ones barging into our territory here.”

His grin turns a little more pointed, and he hopes they’re not gonna snap just over Pat acknowledging that they’re in fact Winspear East members. Dude 1 stops looking like he’s about to just walk away, turning full towards Pat and crossing his arms in front of his chest. He stares Pat down like he’s reevaluating whether Pat’s worthy of his attention, and Pat pretends not to care, keeping his body language relaxed enough that he doesn’t seem too defensive.

“Yeah Jamal?” he says, raising one eyebrow at Jamal, who just looks back blankly, before slowly nodding, like the good sport he is. Pat looks back to the Millicent guys. “So yeah, not looking for a fight here.” He shrugs. “If _you’re_ looking you can just keep walking that way afterwards.” He points vaguely down the direction they’d already been going. “But anyway, so. Mikey. Our boss, as you know. Do you know who Mikey is?”

“Obviously,” Dude 2 says, rolling his eyes.

“Great,” Pat says cheerfully. “So he wants to talk to one of you guys. To talk to Rakim. But didn’t want to send any of _us_ guys on a suicide mission. I mean, imagine me, walking into your territory, right?” Pat gestures towards himself, to emphasise how _non_ -threatening he is. Dude 3 sort of smirks, but the other two stay stoic. Well then. “Love the response I’m getting here guys.”

“You talk too much,” Dude 1 says.

“Ah, yeah I get told that a lot,” Pat says. “But you see, when you’re dealing, it’s actually great. Helps put the kids at ease. On top of me being a kid myself.”

Jamal is fidgeting next to Pat, throwing him side-glances like he doesn’t know what the fuck is going on. He looks like he wants to talk. Pat wants to step on his foot so he’ll keep his mouth shut. And stop ruining Pat’s act. Jamal’s gonna end up making the other guys more impatient just by looking impatient himself. You gotta relax if you want the person in front of you to relax too, that’s just how this works.

“Get to the point already,” Dude 2 says.

Dude 1 give him an amused look. Pat rolls his eyes.

“Yes, yes,” Pat says. Plays up the cockiness because it’s all he can think of. “You’re in a hurry to get beat up by better, stronger Win East members. To each their own. And by the way, shit tactic. Coming with only the three of you? I mean, you know there’s more of us around here, right?”

Dude 3 actually laughs at that, and Dude 1 smiles too, like they think Pat is being funny. Pat wasn’t, in the sense that they _are_ going to get beat up, but this just confirms that they’re not taking him seriously. Which had been his intention all along. He flashes his best grin at them. So far, so good, in the way of keeping these guys distracted.

“Your point,” Dude 1 reminds him.

“Yes. My point.” Pat swallows.

The thing is, he doesn’t have much more to back him up after he gets to his “point”, so he doesn’t really feel like getting there. It’s not ten minutes yet, he doesn’t think. Maybe they’ll hurry so Pat and Jamal don’t get murdered, but maybe that was already counted in the ten minutes. And they told Pat and Jamal to hold these guys up. It’s probably worth it to them if they get murdered a little bit. Even if Pat would rather not die right now. Not even a little.

“Mikey wants to talk to a Millicent guy. Because he has a message for Rakim. Cause you know, _I_ obviously can’t tell you. So you should. Go see Mikey. Or we’ll get Mikey to meet you somewhere neutral. Or do you have Rakim’s phone number? That’s probably something they should have exchanged by now, even as arch nemesis. It’s kinda dumb that there’s so much risk of getting small guys beat up every time they want to talk.”

“Does Rakim not have Mikey’s number?” Dude 2 asks the others, frowning like he’s not sure.

Pat actually has no idea. They probably do, if they’re smart. But he’s counting on the fact that they’re not, or that it’s not common enough information.

“Apparently not,” Dude 3 says, shrugging.

Dude 1 watches Pat shrewdly. “You wanna know why we’re here?” he asks, and Pat doesn’t really like his tone.

“Already called you out on that one,” he chirps lightly. “You wanna get beat up. Next.”

“You don’t actually believe that,” Dude 1 says, and Pat shrugs.

“What do I know man. I’m 15.”

“More like 12,” Dude 3 helpfully points out.

Pat makes a mock-offended face. “Well that’s not nice. I’m clearly just a little short for my age, but I assure you-“

“We’re here to find the dealers at the corner and roughen them up a little,” Dude 1 interrupts him, and Pat’s eyes immediately dart back to him, smile falling. He licks his lips, watching Dude 1 warily. He’s not actually surprised, and he doesn’t bother hiding it. Only tenses enough to acknowledge that he gets what Dude 1 is saying. “Make our presence known, you know. Usual business.”

“Uh-huh,” Pat says, dancing from one foot to the other nervously. “But see, you’ve said it yourself, I’m practically a child. And my friend here? He just looks tough. He’s actually younger than me.”

Jamal throws Pat an irritated look, but doesn’t deny it. Because Pat’s actually right on that one.

“You wouldn’t want to roughen up middle schoolers, would you?” Pat continues, batting his lashes exaggeratedly. “That wouldn’t be very honourable. Especially since we came to deliver a message to you at the cost of our own safety. Maybe I can give you Mikey’s phone number instead and you can take it back to Rakim. Change today’s goal for the noble cause of communication between our two groups.”

Dude 3 actually pulls a face at that, and Dude 2 looks unsure too. “Middle schoolers is kinda low, man,” Dude 3 says.

“My man,” Pat says brightly.

“We don’t have to _kill_ them,” Dude 1 says, rolling his eyes.

“Not… my man?”

Pat and Jamal exchange looks. Pat’s got a knife in his pocket, just in case, and he reaches into it. Wraps his fingers around the knife. Just for security. He can tell Dude 1 follows the movement of his hand with his eyes. This is probably the time where they don’t want to look like easy targets anymore. Even if they’re supposed to keep the guys here, not get them to leave.

“Obviously not your man,” Dude 1 says.

“That’s unfortunate,” Pat says.

“Fucking come at us,” Jamal says.

Pat sighs. Well this is happening then. His first proper fight that isn’t just Chiron or Lance showing him how to land a punch.

He bends down to pick up an empty can from the ground. All three guys in front of him tense.

Then everything starts happening at once.

Pat straightens and throws the can right at Dude 1’s head.

Dude 2’s fist connects with Pat’s side.

Jamal yells something.

Pat folds into two, pretty pathetically, gets another blow to the side of the head that makes him see stars. Blindly, his fingers grab the knife and snap it open. There’s a scream of rage when he digs into something – flesh, close – and pulls it out again, fingers suddenly warm with sticky hot blood. Then there’s a hand grabbing a hold of Pat’s curls and yanking him back, throwing him heavy on the ground. Pat drops the knife.

Then there’s more yelling, and when he looks around, there’s three other guys running towards them. Backup. Finally. Pat’s head is ringing from the punch, and from being slammed against the ground. Thankfully, his attackers’ attention seems to be shifting to the guys running towards them. One of them is holding something in his hand, and it’s- Jesus, is that a gun? It’s a gun. A fucking gun. Lance, pointing a gun at the three guys standing.

Then, there’s the sound of a gunshot.

Pat stares, stares as Dude 1 drops to the ground. The world is spinning. He thinks he’s going to throw up. They just- Did they- Did Lance just fucking _kill_ -

“Get the fuck up,” Jamal is yelling, yanking at Pat’s shirt, and Pat’s eyes snap back to him, wide and panicked.

His body is flooded with adrenaline, and he’s got to- yes. Get up. He stabbed one of them he thinks. Dude 2, maybe. Hopefully not somewhere vital, although that- yeah, that doesn’t matter anymore, does it? Not right now. Pat takes a rattling breath, all the colours too vivid. Sounds too loud. Stumbles against Jamal’s side as he finds his balance.

Dude 2 has blood rushing down his forearms, as it turns out, and he’s at hands with one of the older guys. Ben, Pat thinks. He’s glad, he thinks distractedly, that it’s just the forearm. Even if Dude 1 is now… He shakes himself. He can’t. Can’t freeze right now. Even if it’s just two guys left standing and there’s five of them.

They don’t even need Pat and Jamal, in the end, just beat Dude 2 and 3 to a pulp, until they’re both on the ground bleeding. Then Lance reaches out to bump Pat’s shoulder.

“Hey kiddo, you okay? We thought you might’ve suffered a little.” He cocks his gun playfully. “Was ready to avenge you and everything.”

Pat stares a little at the figure of Dude 1 on the ground. The wound in his head, with blood slowly trickling onto the ground. Because Lance did kill him, did “avenge” Pat and Jamal, even though they weren’t really hurt. Pat’s head feels like it’s swimming, from the hit, still, but other than that he thinks he’s fine. Jamal has a bloody nose, but he’s standing too.

“Yeah,” Pat says weakly.

“He distracted them,” Jamal says. “Talked them full with bullshit until you guys arrived.”

“Oh yeah?” Lance says, interested. “Good job, Pat.”

Pat wonders how Lance can sound so okay when he just murdered a man. He shakes his head, ears still ringing.

“Talking is easy,” he says, like he’s far away from himself. “I talk.”

“Hey, hey,” Lance says, wrapping an arm around Pat’s shoulder. “You’re not shocked because of the beating, are you?” He gestures towards the bodies on the ground with his gun. Dude 2 starts coughing blood. “They had it coming. They know the rules.”

“Was my first fight, cut me some slack,” Pat says, weakly punching Lance’s side to hide his uncomfortableness. “I’ll get used to it, yeah?”

“Oh yeah,” Lance laughs. Ruffles Pat’s hair. “We’ll toughen you up, little guy.”

Pat swallows dryly. He wonders if this is why his parents kicked him out. If this is what they saw coming for him. He doesn’t know. He feels like he’s on a rollercoaster he can’t get off from anymore. Like all he can do is hold on and try not to break his neck.

“Yeah,” he says.

 

~~~

 

The first time Pat has sex, he’s 16.

It’s not the story he tells everyone else, obviously, but 16 it is. Junior year of high school, with Erica still in his old middle school, and Ollie and Tara in different high schools than he is. He’d requested one closer to the turf, to get away from his old life, and so he wouldn’t have to walk for nearly two hours every day. Sometimes he’d jogged, and it’s kept him in shape, but when it’s 7 in the morning and everything is dark and cold, he’d rather be inside his bed instead of out on the streets.

He’s had his own bedroom since he moved to Kev’s parents’ house, because Kev has an older sister who moved out, and Pat was allowed to stay in her room. Kev’s parents are the best. Pat doesn’t show it _too_ much, because he doesn’t want to come across as a momma’s boy, even if they’re not his actual parents, but he secretly helps around the house sometimes, when Kev is out, and he tries to convince them to accept part of the money he makes dealing as rent as soon as he starts earning it. They refuse it, but Pat can tell that the gesture is appreciated, at least.

He gets a phone instead, with the money, so Erica can call him whenever she gets her hands on a landline. He could ask her if he ever needs something from Mom or Dad, but he usually doesn’t. He’s known how to falsify his parents’ signature since he was 12.

Abigail’s a girl he meets in class. She’s got shiny black hair and a bright smile. Pat likes her. She’s like a breath of fresh air compared to home, to the gang, where everyone knows each other, and on the moment’s notice they could go from horsing around with a joint to beating the crap out of some kids who couldn’t pay for their crack on time.

Pat still likes his guys, he does. He probably owes his life to Kev, given that he would have frozen out on the street if he hadn’t taken him in, owes it to Lance too, who saved it that first time Pat found himself in a gang fight. And it’s fun, hanging out with them. It’s the gang part he’s not so keen on. Dealing drugs is easy, it’s kind of his thing, and he brings back pretty good profits, but beating up kids? He does it because he knows that’s how it works, the same way that they knew when they got involved with the gang, but he doesn’t take pleasure in it.

So Abigail being this safe haven that she is, rolling her eyes at Pat’s bruises and shooting paper balls at him during classes, Pat can’t help but fall in love with her. That’s got to be it, because every time he mentions her name to anyone back home, they start whooping and making obscene gestures. Abigail herself seems to agree too, because when he kisses her, she gets all red and then blinks up through her lashes at him, coy smile on her lips. Pat isn’t like, blown away, but he knows by now that kissing also just isn’t really his thing.

She doesn’t look like any of his sisters, or even like Tara, and that’s good, because he thinks that would be weird. He’s fumbling, the first time he touches her, and she totally figures him out, that this is his first time, but she doesn’t call him out on it. Instead she guides his hand between her legs, has him slide his fingers into her, where she’s warm and wet and mysterious. Pat’s a little freaked out, but he’s glad for the guidance, and tries to learn. He really does.

He learns what a clit is. Learns that if he gets his thumb on it, he can make Abigail moan like she actually means it. He’s fairly certain that some of the other times, she doesn’t quite. He’s good at spotting lies like this. Not that he blames her. He’s completely out of his depth, and the slight discomfort he feels touching her never quite goes away, not even after sleeping together for the fourth or the fifth time. He’s not sure if it’s enough of a sign to tell him he doesn’t like girls at all, because he _does_ like Abigail, and he likes when she sucks his cock. Then he can just close his eyes, and focus on the sensation, and let her go to town.

Sometimes she has to blow him before he can fuck her, but he thinks that’s just part of foreplay. She never mentions all the ways that Pat is failing. Talks about the things he does well instead. Even puts him on his knees once, with his head between her legs, and right, that’s what the guys meant by “face-sitting”. Now Pat gets it. And he- he’s not a fan. But that’s okay, because he can return the service after Abigail blows _him_.

Abigail thinks it’s kind of cool that he has a tattoo, and it makes Pat want to maybe get more. He’s gained some muscle since last year, even if he’s still more lean than broad, and he thinks it might look cool. He thinks the guys will think it’s cool. A lot of them have tattoos too.

So he lets Abigail help him pick out a design, and then goes to a tattoo parlour, because now he has money, and he can do that. He ends up getting a cool lion over his shoulder and forearm, and Abigail laughs, because “It has a mane like you.”

Pat shakes his curls and flashes his teeth at her, growling playfully. His gang name should totally be something to do with lions. And he should probably get a haircut. He thinks that’s what’s implied in the term “mane”. He gets Kev’s mom to cut his curls to something more decent, and then he buys a box of bleach and drenches his hair in it. If he’s going to be called Blondie, he might as well own up to it.

Abigail laughs herself silly when she sees him the next day, so Pat bites her shoulder. They get into a catfight until the teacher has to kick them out of class, and even then, they send each other provoking glances in between giggles every time the adults have their back turned to them.

 

~~~

 

The first time Pat overdoses, he’s 17.

It’s not pretty, but then again, not a lot of things have been in Pat’s life recently.

It’s been two years of violence, two years of drugs that Pat should just have been selling but consumed too much of himself. Two years of feeling lost in the world, every benchmark that Pat had had slipping through his fingers, every friendly face around him hardening if he showed any weaknesses, booze and sex. Abigail had left him after she’d found out that he’d cheated on her, and he’d cried over a bottle of Vodka for an entire night before going out the next day and doing it all over again.

Every second he’s spent in his seat in high school has felt like a joke, like he was pretending to be part of a world that wasn’t his. When Erica had picked the same high school as him just to see him again, the idiot, she’d said she barely recognised him anymore. Pat had looked at her silently, and thought to himself that he didn’t recognise himself either. Messed up enough that he’d gotten into a fight during lunch break over someone sneering a little too openly at his little sister. Erica refusing to talk to him for days after that, because she didn’t understand.

It’s not that it’s not fun either, living with Kev and the guys. They’re Pat’s best friends, his brothers. The family that he doesn’t really have anymore. He still hasn’t told any of them that he has sisters, and he thinks it’s better that way. He doesn’t want anyone to get any funny ideas by going to seek out Erica over something Pat himself did. He’s pretty sure the guy whose eye he gouged out would have been interested in that kind of information.

Pat likes his friends. Still likes selling things to people, likes the thrill of negotiating with someone stronger than him. Those are the times he doesn’t drink, stays sober, because he needs to _think_. Drugs are fun, and that’s exactly that. They’re _for_ fun. When he’s out with the guys, wondering idly if Jamal grew another few inches over the summer. His shirts are a little too tight over the shoulders now. It’s distracting. But he doesn’t do drugs when he’s working, and that’s probably a good thing, because he’s pretty sure Mikey and Lance have asked Kev to keep an eye on him and how much of the stash he takes for himself.

He’s not always sober when he’s in school, though, and that’s something that definitely translates. He’s failing pretty much every class that requires any learning by heart, only does well in subjects like maths or economics. Sometimes literature, if he bothers reading the books. But then even doing well is relative, because right now, his standard for “well” is simply not failing.

Sometimes, he doesn’t go to school at all. Erica tells him that the school has been calling home, and Pat just laughs. It’s not like Mom and Dad can admit to the school that they kicked him out. The school would end up calling child services or some shit. They’re stuck with dealing with his problems whether they want to or not, and Pat feels some sort of vindictive satisfaction over that. They didn’t want to have to deal with him, but he’s their son whether they want it or not, and the world won’t stop reminding them until Pat’s at least 18.

When he overdoses, he doesn’t even do it on purpose. He’s not suicidal or anything. Really, all that happens is that he gets drunk after a meeting with the headmistress, who tells him in no small words that he has to get his shit together if he doesn’t want to be expelled. There’s the SATs at the end of the year, and college, and doesn’t he want to go to college? He could get out of Buffalo if he wanted to, if only he “applied himself”. Which is a whole load of bullshit if you ask Pat. And definitely doesn’t mess with his head, making him think about the _future_.

He doesn’t have plans, is the thing. _Does_ he want to go to college? He thinks he’s supposed to, but he can barely stand high school, and it’s not like he has money. Or, well, not more than a couple months worth of living on his own, rent and all. He remembers thinking that he wouldn’t stay in Winspear East when he first joined, and wonders about that. About where he could go to. He doesn’t actually _know_ anything. The thing he’s best at is selling drugs and gang negotiating. He knows how to lie. He still knows some Italian from Tara teaching him, and sewing. It’s nothing to build a life on.

So he gets drunk. Can’t think about it anymore, can’t deal with the way his head feels like it’s going to explode. There’s a pit of despair at the bottom of his stomach that feels like it’s going to swallow him up, because he doesn’t have anywhere else. Anyone else. Just the Win East guys and a criminal record.

Except that the alcohol isn’t enough, and it’s making him sad, so he reaches for his crack pipe instead. He’s got a small cocaine stash in his room, that he usually tries not to use when he’s alone, except for when he’s really, really down. Now seems like one of these moments. He doesn’t bother measuring the dose, doesn’t really measure it at all these days anymore. His body is too used to the drug. Instead, he just fills the pipe as far as it’ll fit with nimble fingers, and hopes that something will make it all stop, the things in his head. The way it’s all spinning.

He lights the pipe, breathes in deep as the smoke fills his lungs, familiar and good.

When the rush comes, he laughs.

Yeah that’s what he needs. Feeling like this, like he’s on top of the world, because when he’s like this, he can’t be scared of falling down. Sure, he’s had a few moments of paranoia on crack, but mostly, it just makes him feel high as a kite, and like he could solve all of his problems if he only wanted to. He doesn’t have to fucking care about the headmistress, because this is a problem for another time. It’s December, college is still far away.

He wants to go bother Kev, maybe, so he gets up, feeling jittery, walks to the door. He’s skipping his steps a little. Kev’s mom doesn’t want them to smoke inside her house, so Pat peeks through the door to check if the way is free, before slipping into Kev’s room. He closes the door behind himself extra-carefully, and when he turns back towards Kev, Kev is looking at him with one eyebrow raised. Pat snorts.

“It’s just me,” he tells Kev, in case he’s not sure.

“You high?” Kev asks bluntly.

Pat shrugs, doesn’t bother denying it, and comes to plop down on the bed next to Kev, who’s fucking around on the laptop, balanced on top of his knees. He rolls onto his back, and wow, things are definitely spinning a little. He wonders if that’s the booze, or if crack has new effects on him. That’d be interesting, especially after doing the drug for so long. Except that he doesn’t feel so good, and his heart is kind of threatening to jump out of his chest, in a bad way. So maybe not the discovery of the century.

“Wow, dude, colours are fucked up,” he tells Kevin, squinting at the ceiling, where the contrast is hurting his eyes. It also feels very close. Like it might drop down on him. He licks his lips, mouth overly dry. “You should change them. They’re bad. _You’re_ bad.”

“Don’t fucking get high in my mom’s house,” Kev complains, kicking Pat’s side. “How many times do I have to tell you? You’re such a fucking junkie.”

“Not a junkie,” Pat protests. “It’s really all the headmistress’ fault for wanting to talk about the future. The _future_ , Kev. You-“ He stops, zoning out for a second. There’s black dots dancing in front of his eyes. His chest feels tight around his ribcage, or maybe his ribcage feels tight around his organs, pressing down. He might die. “The future?” he says uncertainly.

“What the hell, man,” Kev mumbles, somewhere at the edge of Pat’s consciousness.

Pat rolls onto his side, curling up around himself, because wow, suddenly he’s feeling really, really bad. He sticks his head between his knees, tries to breathe. In, and out, except that it’s still irregular. He tries to count his breaths, but even that fails. And oh, okay, he’s shivering now, too. Hot and cold, and- and it’s bad. It’s bad, he doesn’t like it, wants it to stop. This isn’t how being high usually feels. He’s probably having a bad trip, and it- it’ll stop. Or maybe Pat will die. Either of those things. They seem equally likely, that’s for sure.

He thinks Kev is calling his name, and when he touches Pat’s shoulder, Pat jerks.

“Don’t touch me. Oh my god,” he moans. “Go away.”

He’s talking to the cocaine rush, but maybe Kev too. He’s not sure. Kev is still talking, saying things, but he moves away from Pat.

“I’m gonna puke,” Pat says.

He doesn’t move though, stays curled up as waves of nausea crash over him. Moving seems dangerous. He has to hold his knees to his chest. If he pukes he’ll just- do it where he is. As if to illustrate that thought, a heave goes through his entire upper body, and Pat just clings harder to his knees, presses his eyes shut tight. He can’t think further than _bad bad bad_ and _I’m gonna die_. Even the knowledge that it’ll probably pass isn’t really getting anywhere to the forefront of his mind anymore. His awareness is reduced to the irregular rhythm of his heartbeat and the nausea.

Then there’s hands on him again and- people lifting him. Carrying him away. He flails, unsure of whether he wants to fight them off. He can barely control his arms now that they’re not wrapped around his knees anymore. He gets put down on some surface, sitting up, and there’s voices, and- light. Pat throws an arm over his eyes, or means to, because he sort of rolls with his arm, following the impulse, and nearly falls off- whatever it is that he’s on.

“Oh god,” he whines again.

His breathing is coming in harsh, laboured heaves, and he thinks he might puke on every exhale. He wants to curl up again, but there’s things holding him in place, and he can’t- he can’t move. Can’t lie down. Things are moving around him but he can’t, so he starts crying, heavy, ugly sobs, and it just makes it all worse. Breathing between the nausea and the sobs and god, Pat has never felt so bad in his entire life.

Everything afterwards passes in a blur. Pat doesn’t faint, he doesn’t think, but he’s also barely conscious. Someone gives him something to drink, asks what drug he took, and Pat thinks Kev answers for him. Pat tries to talk, but he only makes a choked off noise, and then there’s the feeling of a needle in his arm, like they’re drugging him more, or- Pat doesn’t know. He closes his eyes, lets things happen. Tries not to let his heart gallop out of his chest.

It’s only after he’s calmed down enough to take in his surroundings – a hospital room – that he manages to pass out, and he’s glad for it. After whatever that was ( _overdose_ , a traitorous voice in his brain whispers), the nothingness of sleep is pure bliss.

Kev goes home, probably, because when Pat’s eyes blink open in the morning, bleary, he’s not there. Instead, it’s Pat’s dad, on a chair next to his bed, watching Pat with a sad face. And Pat wonders for a second if he’s still dreaming, because he hasn’t seen Dad in two years, two and a half if you add the time he spent at juvie before getting kicked out.

He looks old. Old and weary. He meets Pat’s eyes, and all Pat can think is that Dad looks worse than before Pat left, so maybe kicking him out didn’t actually make their life easier. Maybe he actually worried. Maybe he regretted it.

Then he realises that the hospital must have called his parents, because he’s still a minor. And he wonders if Dad even _wanted_ to come, or if he’s here because he has to. There’s no sign of Mom anywhere, so she’s got to be at work, and that shows how much _she_ cares too. Pat isn’t worth a day’s salary, has never been. He swallows dryly, eyes stinging.

Because the thing is, Pat _wants_ her to be here, wants the both of them to care. To pretend that they care even, even if he’ll be able to see the lie.

“Patrick,” Dad says, when Pat’s lips remain pressed tightly together, and the name feels as unfamiliar as everything else. No one ever calls Pat Patrick. It’s a name he associates with his parents being angry with him, and not much more. With his dad’s name.

“Why are you here?” Pat asks quietly.

_Are you here because you care?_

He’s got to know. Has to know if Dad is just here to make sure he’s let out of hospital, before driving home without Pat. If he’s planning on leaving Pat at some corner – in the middle of winter, again.

Pat can go back to Kev’s, sure, but- He doesn’t want to. Doesn’t want to go back into a house where he broke all the rules when they’ve shown nothing but kindness to him. He didn’t just drink and drug himself under their roof, he nearly fucking killed himself. If Kev hadn’t been there, if Pat had just had to stay alone in his room- Pat feels sick. He closes his eyes, breathes in, breathes out. Fuck. He fucked up _real_ bad this time.

There’s no way he can go back there and ask for help again. He’s wasted the chance they gave him, wasn’t even fucking fit to be a gang member, because he _knows_ that a dealer should never do drug themselves. He’s known for years. And yet, he dug that hole for himself, and everyone will know. They’ll know he fucked up so bad he brought that shame on him and Kev’s family. He’s a miserable, pathetic drug addict, who tries to feel better about himself by beating up some kids over pocket change.

Well, not pocket change, because that’s not policy. But. His reputation is ruined either way. And rep, street cred, all of that, that’s all that makes up his social status in Win East.

“The hospital called home,” Dad says unhelpfully, and Pat lets out a breath.

“Okay, let me rephrase this.” His gaze hardens, throat tight as he stares down his father. “Are you here to take me home, or are you gonna tell me to fuck off the minute I step out of this room?”

Dad visibly jumps at that, guilt passing over his face. Pat keeps his face blank. Keeps his gaze hard. Because he’s not going to beg. If they don’t want him, he’ll find another way. He’s old enough that he can probably find a place to stay until his 18th birthday. Find a new job. Or he’ll just go back to Win East. He’ll suck it up, take the mockery and whatever else is coming his way. If he doesn’t get kicked out from there too, that is.

“I…” Dad says. “We haven’t talked about it. With your mother.”

Pat gives him a long look. He wants to scoff, wants to say never mind. He does have some pride. But. But Dad didn’t say no. He said they haven’t talked about it, so- so maybe they can. Talk about it. Pat doesn’t have to beg, he can just explain things. He looks down into his lap, hesitant, before gazing back up at Dad.

“Are you gonna? Would you?”

“Do you _want_ to come home?” Dad asks.

Pat watches him. Licks his lips nervously. Then, slowly, he nods.

He’s never wanted to _leave_ home. There’s kids on the streets that ran away, that have a problem with authority, but that’s never been Pat’s case. He didn’t choose to leave, doesn’t even have a problem with authority. Hierarchy in Win East suited him just fine. He respects his teachers. Maybe not the police, not entirely, but that’s different.

Dad sighs. Pat bites his lips, wondering if that means that Dad is tired of him. If he thinks Mom won’t want to talk.

“We’ve missed you, son,” Dad says. “I didn’t think I’d find you again _here_. Didn’t think you’d just-“ He breaks off, clearly perturbed. Pat frowns.

“I didn’t try to kill myself. If that’s what you think.” Dad looks up, clearly surprised. Pat can’t help but feel a little angry that he’d assume that of Pat. But then what does he know? Of Pat, of who Pat has become in the past three years. “It was an accident.”

“But you did drug yourself.”

“Well duh.” Pat stares at Dad, searching his face when he opens his mouth hesitantly.

Closes it again. Like he doesn’t quite know what to do with Pat. With his junkie son. Pat thinks Kev might have called him that last night.

“What do you want to hear from me?” he asks quietly. “That I’ve been smoking crack five days a week? I have. And if you-“ He breaks off, voice uncertain. “No. I’ll stop. I swear I’ll stop.” No ifs, not buts. “I can promise you I’ll be good, if that helps.” He wrings his hands, looking for signs that Dad might be swayed. “I’ll stop with the drugs. And the- everything. I’ll go to school and take my SATs and try to go to college, okay? I’ll do all that.”

 _If you’d just please give me a chance_ , he wants to add, but he told himself he wouldn’t beg and he won’t. Instead he goes silent again. His heart is beating painfully in his throat again, and he thinks part of it might be the residual drugs in his blood, because this isn’t normal nervousness. Not that he wouldn’t be nervous either way. He’s setting himself up for rejection again, and rejection fucking _hurts_.

“We’ll talk about you staying, okay?” Dad says. He hesitates. “But you can come home for now. Rest for the next few days.”

Pat nods slowly, before a thought occurs to him and he grimaces. “I’m, uhm. The next few days aren’t going to be nice, though? If I stop.”

He’s gone through withdrawal twice before, and neither had been nearly as bad as he suspects this is going to be. Not with how long it’s been since he’s been sober. But Pat isn’t exactly _scared_ either, because it’s still not going to be like overdosing and nearly dying. He just won’t be very functional. And only die on the inside. He thinks there was a lot of sweating and shaking last time, but that had been about it for the physical symptoms. Most of it had been his head being messed up.

Dad blinks at him like he doesn’t understand.

“Withdrawal,” Pat says uncomfortably. “Just a fair warning.”

“Oh,” Dad says.

He seriously looks like he’s reconsidering his offer, and Pat drops his eyes uncomfortably. He doesn’t think that offering to go get his crack reserve will be much appreciated here, but he doesn’t really see another way around it.

“It’s not like-“ Pat sighs. “It’s not bad. It’s not even as bad as alcohol withdrawal.”

Not externally at least, and that’s all Dad really needs to know right now.

“Yeah okay,” Dad says, answering Pat’s sighs. “Okay, I’ll call your mother, and then I’m taking you home.”

Home.

Pat closes his eyes. He’s going _home_.

 

~~~

 

The first time Pat leaves Buffalo, he’s 17.

It’s funny, really, how he managed to stay in the same city for nearly the entirety of his 18 first years on, like, the planet, but then he’s never really had the money to move. Vacations are something he knows from TV and some of his richer classmates. Mostly, school holidays would consist of local kids maybe kicking a ball together, playing street hockey, or, when Pat went to Win East, partying hard and doing extra shifts.

But now he’s 17, has been clean for eight consecutive months, and he’s moving to Chicago. For college. He still doesn’t fucking believe it, not even as he hugs his family goodbye at the airport, eyes wide and a little crazed because he’s never been in an airport before, okay, and there’s lots of shit happening everywhere around him. But driving would take too long, and the price of the fuel would probably be the same as a one-way plane ticket. It means that nobody is coming to Chicago with him, but Pat can take care of himself.

He’s glad that he even has his whole family to see him off, because that’s not a given. But Mom and Dad took him back in, and Pat got to sleep in the same room as Erica again. Just for that, he thinks that the time he spent bent over a toilet, dry heaving because he couldn’t think further than the cravings that made him feel too tight in his skin, was worth it. That all the efforts he put into school to try and get good enough SAT results that he would still have a chance to go to uni were worth it.

He squeezes Erica tight, buries his nose in her hair, and she squeezes him right back. Says “I’ll miss you. Don’t get into trouble or I’ll come to get you.”

It’s a variation of the same thing everyone has told him, and only Jackie refrains from telling him to stay in line, but he doesn’t care. His eyes are definitely not dry by the time he waves everyone goodbye, and fuck, he’s going to miss them. Sure, this time he’s allowed to come back when he’s on holiday, but he’ll have to save up to even buy the tickets, and he wants to contribute to rent, and- It’s just going to be a little tight.

Mom and Dad are paying his tuition for him, and he knows what that debt is going to cost them. All he can do is try to help support himself to the best of his ability. All of his earnings from Win East, and most of what he earned in the last six months, working at Target, went into the hospital bill from December. He only kept enough to manage his move, and he’s not confident that it’ll be enough to buy furniture. He’s moving into this rundown apartment, which he’s gonna share with three other dudes, and his room is bare. But then it’s not like he needs a closet when all of his belonging fit into one backpack. Just a mattress, and maybe a desk and a chair.

And then school supplies. That should be doable, hopefully. He’ll start looking for a job as soon as he’s there, and just hope that none of his roommates are serial killers. Although Pat is pretty sure that he can deal with a killer. He’s _friends_ with people who’ve murdered in cold blood before. Or, well. Used to be. He hasn’t exactly had much contact with anyone from East Win since he moved back into his parents’ house. He’d gone to pick up his stuff at Kev’s house, but his parents some flowers as an apology, and then followed Kev’s advice never to show his face around there again if he wanted to keep his teeth.

The apartment turns out about as old and poorly-insulated as Pat expected, in the end. None of his roommates are looking like serial killers though, so that’s good. And the apartment has a no-smoking policy, which Pat thanks the gods for, because he really doesn’t fucking want to get exposed to any form of smoking again in the immediate future. All in all, it’s pretty cool. He even finds a mattress on craigslist that has one suspicious-looking spot on it but smells alright for only 40$. The day after his arrival, he prints out some CVs and goes to search for a job, chatting up the cashiers in about every store close to where he lives and around campus.

He does try-outs at two supermarket chains, one fishing shop, and a sports equipment shop. Only the fishing shop tells him no, because he really knows jack shit about fishing, but he ends up picking the sports equipment one, because being a cashier at a supermarket honestly sucks, and the shop is closer to campus. He doesn’t have any trouble convincing anyone that he’s good at convincing people either, because, well. He’s good at that.

It’s actually how he picked his major. In economics. He’d figured he’d be good in sales, somewhere, somehow, and while his professional experience isn’t something he can write on a CV, he does still have it. The stats minor is just for fun, and because maths are useful in economics. Pat likes stats more than he does all of the remaining areas of maths, so why not? It makes him sounds smart. Smarter than his GPA would make you think, that’s for sure. Pat didn’t exactly get a lot of offers from universities. He just picked Chicago because they accepted him.

He works for a full week before classes finally start, because they only do in the middle of September and he’d been forced to rent the entire month. It lets him get to know the store better, as well as the management team, and he lets them know honestly that he’ll try to work whenever he’s available, which they’re delighted by. They’d needed a regular employee but couldn’t afford one, so Pat doing as many hours as he can manage on a part-time contract is good for the both of them. And it makes Pat feel more secure in his life in this new city, with entirely new people around him.

His fresh start.

 

~~~

 

The first time Pat falls in love, he’s 17.

And it doesn’t happen like he’s planned at all. It completely takes him by surprise, in fact. He’d thought he’d been in love before, with Abigail. She’d been beautiful, he’d loved spending time with her, he’d cried when she’d left him. That’s what love is, he’d figured. And if that hadn’t, then it’d be another girl at least. Just the way things are supposed to be.

Except that it’s all different in the end. He starts uni with all of the good intentions in the world, pays attention to classes, makes friends. He even signs up for extracurriculars, because he doesn’t have to pay extra for it. Hockey, because he likes street hockey and still has a fond memory of that one time their parents took him and his sisters ice skating for Christmas. It’s also not the most popular sport in this school, which doesn’t make Pat feel like he’s taking the place away from someone who wants it more.

They make up a nice little team, dudes ranging from complete beginners, like Pat, to guys that are actually pretty good. There’s a bunch of seniors that have been playing the team since freshman and know their way around the ice, just for fun, passing around pucks and hanging out after practice, and there’s newbies from all years. Jonny Taves is probably the best of the freshman recruits, and, after a few rounds of practice, it turns out that Pat isn’t even the worst. Colin is really, really terrible.

One of the seniors decides to take Colin and him under his wing, teach them a few tricks, and he’s delighted by how quickly Pat learns. He’s called Tyler and he has a smile that always makes Pat want to grin right back. He’s even an econ student too, although he isn’t in Pat’s year, and they quickly become friends. Just from the first practice, it becomes obvious that they’re the only two in the locker room with tattoos, which makes them _tattoo bros_ , even if Tyler has more. Pat thinks it’s pretty cool.

Tyler tells Pat to call him Ty the first time they go for a drink together, and Pat’s stomach does funny things. He grins up at Ty around his drink instead, tongue poking against the inside of his cheek.

Pat doesn’t get what’s happening the first couple of times they go out without the team. Just thinks it’s buddies, hanging out. He likes Ty a lot, and Ty likes him right back, but that’s usually a thing that’s kind of necessary to be friends. They pull pranks on their teammates together, and Ty admires Pat’s alcohol resistance. He offers Pat a smoke a few times, and Pat is tempted to say yes, but he doesn’t. Because he’s trying to be good. Pat thinks Ty is kind of ridiculous and careless, but it’s all part of the charm.

They’re out with a few guys from the team – Jonny, Brent, Duncan, Tony – when Ty kisses him. Not in front of the rest of their teammates, but outside, pushing Pat against a wall after they’ve danced together for what feels like forever. Pat makes a strangled sound and- and kind of dies a little. Because woah. Ty’s lips are warm and soft and they make all of Pat’s body feel alive with want in ways he didn’t know was possible. And he’s had _sex_.

“Woah,” he says, staring dumbly at Ty, who laughs.

“Good woah or bad woah?”

Pat shakes his head, ears feeling like he’s underwater a little. He looks at Ty helplessly, a dumb fucking smile spreading all over his face, and Ty laughs again, like he thinks Pat is cute. Pat rolls his eyes, unable to do anything about the grin. Instead says, “Shut up, I’m having a moment over here,” and grabs Ty’s face to slam their lips back together. That shuts him up effectively enough. Pat wants to do it forever.

When Ty takes him home, giggling drunkenly at the way Pat is leaning against his back, sucking a bruise on his neck because Ty has a very good neck, Pat follows him to bed more enthusiastically than he has any of the girls he’s ever slept with. When Ty takes Pat’s dick in his mouth, it’s- informative. Pat can’t look away for a single second, and it’s unlike anything else he’s ever done. He shoots in like, 50 seconds, from the sensations and the sight of Ty’s fucking _smile_ around his dick.

“Oh my god,” Pats moans.

He rolls Ty over and jerks him off, kissing his mouth so he doesn’t end up doing something embarrassing like, kiss the entire rest of his body. He sucks on Ty’s tongue greedily, and Christ, he tastes like Pat’s _come_. Pat makes a desperate noise at the back of his throat, overwhelmed. When Ty comes, Pat’s breathless like he’s just worked out for two hours. He stares down at Ty’s blissed out face. The way his lashes fan out softly over his cheeks, the two-o-clock shadow of his beard that Pat can still feel on his skin.

“So I think I might be gay,” he says absently.

Ty shoves his face into Pat’s neck and wraps his arms around him, koala-mode. Pat blinks, wondering if that means he’s staying the night.

“No homo,” Ty says, wrapping a leg around Pat’s.

Pat snorts in surprise. “You’re fucking ridiculous.”

“I am,” Ty agrees breezily. “You’re into it.”

“Well duh.”

Pat’s cheeks are definitely hot, but whatever. He can admit he’s into Ty if he’s just had sex with him. That’s totally an okay thing to do. It’s not like he’s admitting to having a crush on him. Which- yeah, that’s _definitely_ a thing as well. Pat has no idea when it happened, but he sort of wants to stay the night and the next morning and see where things go from there.

“Am I your first gay experience?” Ty asks, letting go of Pat enough to prop his head up on one arm. Pat kind of wants to lean in and kiss him again, but he doesn’t know if he’s allowed.

“Yeah I’m a virgin,” he says instead, deadpan. “Also, I’m 17, so you’re technically a pedophile.”

Ty squints his eyes at Pat. “I have no idea which parts of what you just said are true.”

Pat laughs. He kind of wants to see how easily he can spin a story for Ty to believe, but he’s also relaxed and happy from his orgasm, and, well. There’s no harm in answering those questions. He can do Ty that favour.

“I’ll trade that secret for a kiss,” he says, wiggling his eyebrows.

Ty smirks, leaning in slowly, slowly, until his lips are ghosting over Pat’s and Pat’s breath is quickening along with his pulse, until Pat’s lips part in anticipation, and there’s a warm tingling sensation buzzing in his stomach. Then he kisses Pat, slides his tongue into Pat’s mouth, plush and wet and like he has all of the time in the world. Pat’s dick even makes a valiant effort at joining the party again. Ty moves on to lick at Pat’s ear, and that does the rest of the job. Pat has to refrain from moaning.

“Answer me?” Ty asks innocently, breath brushing over Pat’s ear where it’s wet from his spit. Pat has a full-body shudder.

“Not a virgin,” he breathes. “And I’m gonna be 18 in a couple weeks.”

“Well that wasn’t so hard, was it?” Ty says, and then wraps his fingers around Pat’s cock.

Pat chokes.

“You’re such a fucking loser,” he complains.

Ty doesn’t deny it, and proceeds to blow Pat’s mind for the second time that night.

Afterwards he offers Pat a joint, because “smoking after sex is good for you”, and Pat’s too mellow to protest. It’s just weed, and it’s- it’s not what Pat wants, but it’s a good enough replacement in that moment. Especially with Ty warm and naked at his side, tracing the lion’s mane on Pat’s shoulder and sending little shivers down Pat’s spine. He asks what the east tattoo is for, and Pat tells him he’s an East Side boy.

“New York?” Ty asks, and Pat says yes, even if he knows Ty means the city, not the state.

Pat thinks to himself that weed had a lot more effects on him when he was 13.

It becomes a habit, though. Because they keep sleeping together, and Ty keeps offering him joints afterwards. There’s a week where that means that they end up smoking every day. Pat thinks it could be bad, but he never has cravings for weed. His body knows what it wants. His mind too, to the point where he fucking _dreams_ of crack a couple of times.

He dreams of Ty too, of having sex with him, but cheesier things too, and every day he feels more and more reassured in the fact that yes, he’s gay, very gay, wow, even gayer than he thought. It makes him think back to things in his childhood and snort at how obvious they feel now. Pat’s anger over Marc’s girlfriend, his fascination with Chiron’s arms. He remembers questioning it, even, for a while, but then Abigail had happened and he’d figured that to be it.

Oh how wrong he had been.

He thinks most of the hockey team is onto their case about sleeping together, too, because there’s a few times where Brent and Duncan walk into Ty’s apartment in the morning to find Pat already there, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes. Pat also seems to be a lot worse at controlling his facial expressions when Ty is concerned. He smiles so much even he can tell it’s disgusting. Ty still thinks he’s cute, and he sort of treats Pat like a child, which is weird when Pat finds out things like how Ty never had a job before in his life, or when he makes offside comments about hobos that sound a lot like he’s blaming them for being out on the street.

Privately, Pat thinks that the only difference between them and him is that he’d found people nice enough to take him in, and that he’d had no scruples at breaking the law. Which Ty boasts he doesn’t care about either, but the most illegal stuff he does is weed, and he’s done underage drinking. It’s just- it’s a different world. And Pat isn’t about to talk to him about it. Instead he makes up different stories about his background every time Ty asks until Ty pieces together that some things are contradicting themselves and that Pat is full of bullshit. Pat laughs himself silly at his dumbstruck face, and then proceeds to teach him how to be better at lying.

Ty _does_ get pissed, though, when he asks about Pat’s birthday again, and Pat has to look at a calendar before declaring that it was apparently two days ago. He tells Ty it’d slipped his mind, which isn’t entirely true, given that he got texts from all his sisters and a call from Mom and Dad. He just hadn’t been bothered to tell anyone at uni. It’s not like it was really important. He can sign his own forms now, which is great, but other than that, he’s just a couple days older. Birthdays have always been a family thing, and his family isn’t in Chicago.

But Ty insists that they go out and celebrate, invites the hockey team because he doesn’t actually know who Pat’s other friends are, and Pat doesn’t have to pay a thing all night. Which is good, because the number of times he’s been going out to drink can make itself felt on his finances. He tries to make up for it by skipping meals or buying the cheapest shit he can find – instant noodles for the win – but he still has to eat, and pay rent, even if he spends half of his nights at Ty’s place, and it’s always a little tight in the week before he gets his salary.

Pat doesn’t go home for Christmas, because he can’t afford it, but he spends two hours on the phone with his family, and it’s nearly the same. On New Year’s, he and Ty go get tattoos together. Not matching, or anything, but just as a fun outing. Ty gets his sleeve completed, at the wrist, and Pat has them add a rising sun on his bicep. Because he’s cheesy like that. Every day is a new one, something like that. He doesn’t really explain it to Ty, and Ty looks ticked off for the rest of the day.

Pat makes it up to him by sucking his cock, afterwards, and he bats Ty’s hands away when he wants to reciprocate, insisting that it’s about him. Ty manages to convince him anyway, fishing Pat’s cock out despite his protests, and then it really is over for Pat. Another point in the gay category. Sucking cock gets him really fucking hot. Yet another thing he never would have predicted.

It’s January when Ty’s best friend, Jamie, comes to campus with a bag of cocaine powder. Pat’s got his legs folded in Ty’s lap, reading out of one of his textbooks, and Jamie flops down in front of them with a gleeful look on his face.

“You ever done any hard drugs, Pat?” he asks, and Pat puts down his book slowly, blinking at him.

“Uh, no,” Pat says, frowning.

His stomach is swooping. There’s an excitement there that even the _danger danger danger_ alarm in his head can’t quite silence. He’s nervous and excited and nauseous all at the same time, and _Jesus_. He wills himself to chill the fuck out.

“I mean, look at this cutie,” Ty says, reaching out to pinch Pat’s cheek. “Hadn’t even done weed before I introduced him to it.”

Pat scowls and bats his hand away.

“Corrupting the young, I see,” Jamie says.

“What do you have?” Pat snaps, a little cold.

He doesn’t like hanging out with Ty and Jamie together for exactly this reason. They think that they need to remind Pat that they’re three years old than him over and over again, like their ego requires that of them, and it’s really fucking irritating. Also Jamie’s a dumbass. But whatever, Pat can put up with him for Ty’s sake. He just likes being alone with him better.

And, to signify his disapproval, he kicks Ty’s thigh a little. Ty just grins at him, all goofy, and Pat rolls his eyes. He can’t be mad at him.

“Co _caine_ ,” Jamie says, and then he pulls out a small bag out of his pocket and _Jesus_ they’re in the middle of campus.

Pat’s head snaps around, immediately checking if there’s anyone watching them.

“Put that away you fucking idiot,” he hisses.

“Chill out, kid,” Jamie says, and Pat wants to throw his book at his stupid face.

He still puts the cocaine bag back into his pocket, and Pat’s eyes track the movement hungrily. He knows how to make crack at home, he just has to take it back, and- and he’s got to buy a pipe. He doesn’t have one anymore. Nearly took it along to Chicago, but didn’t. It’s easy though, he knows just the store, right around the corner from where he lives. He’d looked at the prices, one morning after he’d woken up folded in two, _wanting_. He _can_ afford the pipe. Probably not another cocaine addiction, but.

“Hey,” Ty says, squeezing Pat’s ankle. Pat tears his eyes away from where Jamie’s hand disappeared, has to force himself to focus back on what Ty is saying. “Don’t worry about it. Noone around here cares.” There’s just a few students spread out in the corridor around them, and they do look completely uninterested in whatever the hell their little group is talking about. “It’s just a bit of fun, you know.”

Pat’s eyes dart back to Jamie’s pocket.

“Jeez,” Jamie mumbles.

“So we up for tonight?” Ty asks. Jamie nods. “Sweet. C’mon Pat, you gotta join us. You don’t even have to take any of it.”

Like Pat would ever be able to watch people snort cocaine in front of him and not participate. He’s weak like that. And then there’s the quantity in that bag.

“You’re going to fucking kill yourself if you smoke that between the two of you,” he informs them, bouncing one foot irritatedly.

“You don’t smoke cocaine,” Jamie says, rolling his eyes.

Pat blinks. “Whoops. My bad, don’t know much about the stuff.”

His voice is kind of dripping with irony, but they believe him, so there’s that. They’re probably thinking that he’s some really proper kid who’s scared of drugs, or something, the way he’s been reacting. He could say it in any tone and they’d never guess that Pat’s slipup from smoking most of the cocaine he’s taken in his life. He doesn’t really like snorting it all that much. It hurts his nose.

“You’re still going to kill yourself, though,” he adds, because it’s important. “Especially if you’re not used to it.”

“How do _you_ know?” Jamie asks.

“Oh my god,” Pat mumbles. “Fine, I’m coming with you.”

He’ll just have to make sure neither of them hurt themselves by accident. It’s completely selfless. Obviously. He doesn’t want his boyfriend to have a seizure because he was too dumb to measure out a rail of coke properly.

“Wooh,” Ty cheers, and he leans over so he can press a kiss to the corner of Pat’s mouth. Pat smiles a little. “It’ll be fun. And you’re not gonna get in trouble from trying it once either.”

Pat doesn’t think so either. He can probably deal with taking it once. And he _wants_ to. It’s not smart, but. It’s just the once. And he’ll be making sure everything goes right with Ty. He might be acting all tough, but Pat’s pretty sure he’s only tried it a couple of times before.

“Mmh,” he agrees, wrapping an arm around Ty’s shoulder to pull him in for a deeper kiss. Jamie makes a disgusted noise, and Pat smirks against Ty’s mouth.

“Could you not,” Jamie complains.

Pat slips Ty some tongue instead of bothering to answer, and Ty laughs. He doesn’t pull back, though, and Pat totally counts that as one point in the him versus Jamie battle. Ty totally prefers snogging Pat to talking with Jamie.

Later, when they’re at Ty’s place, because Ty’s the only one without roommates, Pat makes sure that they don’t waste any of the cocaine by laying out rails that are too long, reminding them that they can always take some more after. That’s what he’d do back in Buffalo, with the crack. Multiple highs one after another when the first high only lasted five minutes.

He grimaces after snorting the coke, nose stinging, but it also makes his heart flutter, endorphins kicking in before the drug even does, because- because. Apparently his stupid head still associates drugs with good things. Even thinking back to the time he found himself in the hospital doesn’t take away from that, and, well. Some good came out of overdosing too. He got his family back. So he shakes himself and lets out a wild sort of laugh before wiping his hand before his face.

“Good?” Ty asks.

“Great,” Pat says, dopey grin spreading on his face.

After that, it’s like the floodgates have opened.

They do the cocaine Jamie bought in one evening, Pat finishing up what’s left over for a third high. The next day, he buys a pipe. He finds out that Ty and Jamie have this rule where they don’t do hard drugs more than twice a semester, which they decided on after their first time last year, and the disappointment he feels at that is flooring.

Ty definitely looks at him weird when Pat tries to argue that a second time soon can’t harm. It’s enough to get Pat to shut up, because, right. If this is coming across as weird to someone who doesn’t even know Pat’s history, Pat should probably be more careful. He even considers calling home about it, because maybe a healthy dose of fear to lose his family would motivate him not to go down that road again. He doesn’t, though. Just because he’s financially independent – outside of the tuition itself – doesn’t mean he wants to chance this. He tells himself that he won’t do it, and that that will be enough.

Except that Pat is _obsessed_. He looks around the streets with more attention than before, trying to spot where good dealing corners would be, trying to recognise who the dealers around his apartments are. He debates with himself internally about seeking one of them out on his own. About whether doing it once would mean anything. About whether doing it alone changes anything.

Then he wonders if he could start dealing again. Just to be near the drugs again. He wouldn’t even have to smoke any of it – just sell it. It’d provide him with more money than what he’s earning at the sports shop. Even back in Win East, he’d earned more, and he’d been a minor, and smoked a much too high proportion of his own stock. Which, sure, had been cheaper for him, because he’d only had to pay the difference to his providers without the part for the dealer, but he’d still lost out on a lot of the profit that way.

He’s distracted, and irritable, and after three days of barely sleeping, Ty actually asks him if he’s coming down with something. Pat shrugs. Maybe he is. He skips the next day of uni just to be sure.

That day he pulls on a hoodie and goes out, wallet and hands deep in his pocket. He withdraws three hundreds on the way. It’s not a big deal, he tells himself. Just a craving. Like craving chocolate. You eat the chocolate, and then the craving’s gone. It’s not like he has to start smoking every day, he’s just- It’s just the once. The powder cocaine made him want to try smoking crack again, because it’s not the same, but once he’ll have satisfied the urge, he’ll be fine again. He’ll be able to focus on uni.

He finds one of the guys he’s pretty sure sell crack, lifts both eyebrows in greeting, and buries his hands deeper into his hoodie pocket. He’s got his knife on him, just to be sure. It’s weirdly reminiscent of Buffalo, up to the old brown stain on his sleeve that’s left over from dry blood he never quite managed to wash out. It’s discreet enough that he can pass it off as a random food stain, and it’s not like he’d had the money to buy a new hoodie just because he’d left Win East.

“Yeah?” the guy asks, body language pretty clearly signifying that he wants Pat to fuck off.

“I wanna buy something,” Pat says.

That part’s weird, because Pat has barely ever had to _buy_ his own drugs, but he knows the spiel. He’s got his hood up, shoulders slouched forward, and he knows he looks shady enough that the guy will know what he’s talking about. He doesn’t have anyone introducing him, but he shouldn’t look like a cop either. Which he’s way too young for anyway. The guy still looks at him warily.

“Who sent you?”

Pat sighs. “No one man. I just live around the corner and I know the business.”

“The business,” the guy repeats mockingly, making air quotes with his hands.

“Yeah, the business.” Pat squares his shoulders, holding the guy’s gaze. “The one where you lurk around here on Fridays, Park Avenue on Wednesdays, and Square centre on the week-ends.”

Okay, so maybe Pat hasn’t started watching the movements around his neighbourhood three days ago. He watches the way the guys brows shoot up and he reaches into his pocket. Pat’s fingers tighten around his own knife.

They watch each other for a split-second, measuring each other up.

“I want some crack,” Pat says, finally. “Do you have some or not?”

He’s 99% sure the guy is a dealer, so it’s really up to him to make the guy know he really isn’t here to bust him or some shit like that. And the first person to actually say the words explicitly – talk about the drugs, that is – endangers himself more. The guy squints his eyes at Pat, but, finally, he lets his shoulders drop a little.

“Why the fuck are you watching my spots?”

“Like, I said,” Pat says. “Used to be in the business. Your business.”

“Dealing?”

“Yes,” Pat says, and he carefully pulls his hands out of his hoodie pocket to cross them in front of his chest. “I told you what I want, now do you have it?”

“I do,” the guy says after a pause where he looks like he might protest Pat’s explanation. Whatever, Pat’s smart when he wants to be. He knows patterns. “How much do you want?”

“One eighth,” Pat says immediately.

It’s definitely more than he’s gonna use in one time, but. It all depends on how resistant he still is to the stuff. Might be two times, might be three. And he doesn’t want to, like, try to remedy the craving and then not take enough so he has to go out and buy some more. It’s just- It’s the standard unit. The eight ball, the beginner’s unit of measurement. 3,5 grams.

“One eighty bucks,” the guys answers, and Pat can’t help it. He laughs. The guy scowls. “What’s so funny about that?”

“One eighth is one eighty, c’mon man. It’s a little funny.”

The guy’s mouth twitches, in something that looks more irritated than amused, but whatever. Pat’s actually pleasantly surprised by the price. It’d been a lot more expensive back in Buffalo. Maybe cocaine is more easily accessible here. He’s not about to tell the guy, though, because he’s not dumb enough to have the prices raised in front of his nose. Instead, he haggles the guy, just a little bit, to test whether this is the actual price or he’d give Pat as much as he’d thought he’d have to pay for. The guy doesn’t budge, though, and Pat ends up handing the guy 200 bucks in exchange for change and 3,5 grams of crack cocaine.

When he’s home, he stares at the little plastic-wrapped rocks in the palm of his hand for what feels like forever, until his fingers start to shake with want. Just testing his own will, or something. He’s in front of some crack and he’s not scrambling for it like an animal. He’s totally got this. His eyes are burning, and his mouth feels bone dry, but. He’s got this under control.

He does.

He doesn’t.

Not that he notices right away. The next time he goes out to buy crack, he picks another dealer, just to check the prices, and because his first one definitely wasn’t friendly. Pat needs to have a good relationship with his guy if he’s going to have one. And this dude is called Frank, seems suspicious of Pat for all of five minutes before he lets Pat chat him up, and Pat is glad. He’s well aware that _if_ he ever wants to get back into the drug business, he needs to know people.

When his card gets denied one week into February, he starts considering it more seriously.

Instead, he ends up on Ty’s doorstep, face red with shame as he admits that he doesn’t have any money left for the month and could Ty maybe lend him some? Ty gives him a long look and pulls Pat inside to wrap him into his arms. Pat buries his face against Ty’s neck and shakes.

He doesn’t _want_ to go back. Sure, just selling the stuff and making the money are all good in his books, but that’s just not all there is to that life. He knows it, knows that the only reason he’d been sheltered when he’d started dealing at 13 was his age. That’s not an argument anymore, and if he goes back to drugs, he’ll go back to gang infighting too, street rivalries, having to carry a knife around everywhere and actually using it.

He knows that some of the Win East guys would carry around guns too, and Pat’s mostly gotten out of that one, but that’s just how these things work. The chances of dealing drugs without ever getting involved in bigger networks of organised crime is practically impossible, whether you stick to your position or not.

Ty offers him a joint to distract him, and Pat accepts it silently, hands shaking slightly.

“Do you need to move in with me?” Ty asks.

Pat looks up, staring at him.

They’ve only been dating for three months, and Ty’s offering like it’s natural. Like it’s not way too much, way too soon. Sure, Ty’s parents pay his rent, but he’d still be letting Pat into his life, every aspect of it, and he doesn’t even know where Pat _lives_. He doesn’t know who Pat is at all. He even knows that Pat feeds him bullshit more often than not. And yet he still offered. It’s a testimony of how much he cares. How good a person he is, despite everything that speaks against it.

Pat watches his face, the serious crease in his brow, his dumb pointy nose, dumb eyes, dumb mouth, chest feeling tight with emotion. Warm and desperate at the same time.

“I love you,” he blurts out, and then turns an even darker shade of crimson. “I- Thank you. Really, thank you. But it’s too much. I’ll manage. It’s not my first time having money problems, I’ll just- I’ll find a way.”

The smile that spread on Ty’s face at Pat’s declaration has dropped again by the end, like what Pat is saying is breaking his heart, and Pat sits back uncomfortably. Runs a nervous hand through his hair before taking a long pull from his joint. He closes his eyes, lets the smoke spread out in his long and force his limb to shake off some of the tension in them. His hands are still shaking, but he barely pays attention to it.

“You never said,” Ty says quietly.

Pat shrugs. “Different worlds, man. This was supposed to be my fresh start.”

Ty gets this really weird look on his face, and Pat takes another drag from the joint. He can’t move in with Ty because there’s too much about him that he doesn’t want Ty to find out. And paying a month’s worth of groceries is something Pat can afford in the grand scheme of things, so it’s something he could pay Ty back for. Paying rent in a place like this, so close to the centre, that’s just a no-go.

“You’re barely 18,” Ty points out. “What’d you even have to start fresh _from_?”

Pat doesn’t say anything. Thinks _the first time I stole something I was ten. I went to juvie when I was 14. I had a cocaine overdose in December last year._

“Why won’t you ever talk to me?” Ty asks, and he sounds frustrated.

“You don’t want to know,” Pat says shortly. “And I don’t want to talk about it.”

“You don’t want to move in because you’re scared to let me close to you.”

There’s anger in Ty’s voice, suddenly. Anger and hurt. Pat feels his throat close up, feels the guilt creep into on his stomach like bitter, burning bile. Ty’s right. It’s not the only reason, but Pat _is_ scared of letting him in. Scared of the rejection he knows would come if he talked.

“Fuck you,” Pat says, low and hurt. “I don’t owe you anything.”

He draws his knees up to his chest, stares at Ty, and Ty stands up, clearly enraged, like he can’t stand sitting anymore. Pat throws both of their joints a disgusted look. He doesn’t feel relaxed at all, and Ty clearly isn’t either. His joint is burning down in his hand, barely touched. Neither of them are going to feel any effects before they’ve smoked most of it, and that’s not happening any time soon, apparently. Pat crushes his joint on the ash tray, giving up on it.

“That’s what I’m talking about,” Ty says, towering over Pat. “You don’t _want_ to give me anything. You know my mom’s name, and I don’t even know what city you’re from. Or if anything you’ve told is true at all.”

Pat scowls, wrapping his arms closer around his knees.

“So that’s it?” Ty asks. “When you’re cornered you don’t say anything at all? You don’t have any tear-jerking stories for me? No uncle who emotionally abused you so you can’t trust people anymore?”

Pat stares up at him, and suddenly, the guilt in his stomach is sharpening, turning to anger and disbelief. Because this is too far. How dare Ty say something like that. How can he think that something like abuse is ridiculous, that it’s less important than his own feelings? Sure, Pat has issues, he lies too much, but that doesn’t make the things that happened to him a “tear-jerking story”.

“No, fuck you,” he says angrily. “You have no fucking idea. You’re some rich white boy who’s never had a fucking issue in his life before, and you think you know what any of this is like? You think you have any right to- I went to juvie when I was _fourteen years old_. For dealing crack, okay? So don’t you bullshit me about my age just because you think you’re so fucking mature.”

“You’re white too,” Ty protests weakly, and Pat rolls his eyes, as hard as they’ll go. “And what the hell is juvie? And- dealing crack?”

“Oh my god,” Pat says. He stands up, because his entire body is thrumming with the need to punch something, and he can’t stay sitting down. “Juvie’s prison. Juvenile detention centre.” His sentence hadn’t actually been about the dealing per se, but he’s too tired to explain the probation, the shoplifting, wanting to impress Marc and being stupid. “I went to prison, got kicked out of my parents’ house, and they only took me back when I nearly _died_ on a crack overdose. Are you fucking happy?”

“So you’re… a junkie?” Ty says, staring hard like looking at Pat will give him the answer to whether this is another lie or not.

“Oh I’m sorry, am I not up to your expectations?” Pat asks, irony dripping in his voice. “Did you want some normal 17 year-old to introduce to the wonderful gay life? Someone who’s practically lived in his parents’ backyard his entire life, fresh and ready to move in with you instead?”

Ty stares. Then he shakes his head, slowly. “You’re shitting me. There’s no way you did all that. You hadn’t even smoked weed when we met.”

“Oh so that you believed?” Pat hisses back. “How fucking convenient. Believe the shit you want to believe. But you know what? Forget it. You don’t want to hear what I have to say. I told you. You don’t fucking want to know. So now-“ He turns away, goes right back into the entrance way, trusting that Ty is going to follow along. He does. Pat leans down and starts angrily putting his shoes back on. “Now I’m gonna leave. And you can go right back to you perfect life with your perfect friends who smoke cocaine twice a semester and don’t care about getting caught by the fucking cops because you’ve never had to deal with them ever in your life.”

“Pat-“ Ty says, sounding helpless, but Pat doesn’t stop to listen.

He feels a little bit like he’s going to throw up, heart in his throat, pulse erratic. His chest hurts like he’s clawed it open, and all he knows is that he has to get out of here. He has to leave before Ty can be the one to kick him out. Before Ty tries to be all nice and civilised about it, or pretend it all doesn’t even matter that much. He’s so fucking angry, angry and helpless, and a part of his brain is screaming at him to stop, what the hell is he even doing. He doesn’t know.

When he’s done lacing up his shoes, he grabs his coat and turns around, eyes blazing. “No need to come pick up your stuff at my place. Oh wait, you don’t know where that is.”

Ty jumps like he’s been struck, staring after Pat helplessly. “That’s _you_ ,” he says, begs. “That’s you, you don’t want to tell me, and then- Pat come on, we should talk about this, you can’t just-“

“I can, and I will,” Pat says meanly.

“ _Pat_ -“

Pat doesn’t let him finish. He stalks out of the apartment, leaving the door wide open, down the corridor and the stairs without ever looking back.

Ty doesn’t come after him.

Which is just as well, because Pat starts crying as soon as he’s out of the building. Fat, heavy drops running down his cheeks, making his shoulders shake, and god, what did he do? He’s so fucking stupid, so fucking, so- Fuck, fuck, fuck-

He has to stop, rest his hand on a wall, ignoring the way passerbys are giving him strange looks. Fuck. He’s a mess, hands shaking worse than before, and he’s got to get home, has to see if he’s got any crack left, _anything_. God, he doesn’t have any money. If he doesn’t have anything left at home, then he won’t be able to buy anything. He has a ten in his pocket and his card got declined when he tried to do groceries.

A hand comes to rest on his shoulder, someone asking, “Are you okay young man?” but Pat pushes them away, stumbles alone blindly, then faster, wiping his face with his sleeve, over and over, where the tears are painful in the cold.

He wonders what the hell it is with winter and shitty situations for him. It’s the third time he’s lost everything around this time of the year. Over four years. And this time, he’s in foreign territory. Doesn’t have any people to call up now that he blew his closest friend to hell, whose friends Pat has been sharing for the past months. He doesn’t have _anyone_. Fuck. He’ll have to ask his roommates, find a way, somehow get out of this. He’ll have to-

He shakes his head, wiping at his face some more. He has to get himself together so he doesn’t end up on the street. Whatever that takes. And yet, the only thing that his mind seems to be able to focus on is Ty’s face. How heartbroken he’d looked as Pat spit venom at him. How angry and hurt. How he’d tried to stop Pat.

He thinks that Ty never said I love you back.

 

~~~

 

The first time Pat kills a man, he’s 18.

After he breaks up with Ty, he starts spiralling. Or maybe he’d already started spiralling from the moment Jamie had him snort coke, and Ty is collateral damage. Pat knows that he could probably have fixed it, probably could go back and apologise in the days following his exit out of Ty’s apartment, but he lets them pass anyway. Days, then weeks. He doesn’t go to college, doesn’t go to hockey practice, doesn’t see Ty.

He doesn’t _want_ to fix things. Not when they’ll inevitably get bad again. Not when Pat has to scream into his pillows and punch walls to stop himself from going to see his dealer and ask him for a loan. He’d get it, he knows that. But he also knows that indebting himself to his dealer is the last thing he wants to do if he ever wants to get his life back under control. He’s been on the other side of that, has seen and heard about people losing everything to addiction, until their life was in their dealer’s hands. He’s beat up kids who’d tried to disappear without paying back their debts.

He has to find a way to fix himself that doesn’t involve begging Ty to take him back or indebting himself to a drug dealer. It should be easy, really. And yet, those two things are what keeps him up at night, during the day, crying on his mattress and clutching his stomach because fuck, his body’s fine but it _hurts_. Sometimes he can’t differentiate between the heartache and the crack cravings. It all blends into each other.

His roommates avoid him, refuse to look him in the eye when he walks past them to get to the bathroom, eyes red-rimmed from crying, from not sleeping. He can hear them hush between themselves, probably trying to think of a way to kick him out of the apartment. No one civilised wants a crackhead living with them after all. Pat keeps his head down and doesn’t ask them for help at all.

He makes it through the month of February by buying white rice and eating it plain. Works whenever they’ll have him at the shop, and bites the inside of his mouth bloody to keep smiling and working despite the cravings. For as long as he’s like this, he can’t go looking for a dealing job. Can’t be around drugs. He feels hollow inside, feels like screaming. But after a while, the craving for crack gets better, and it becomes easier to identify the longing in his chest as missing Ty instead.

Ty shows up at his workplace once, towards the end of February. Doesn’t look surprised to see Pat there, because Pat might not have told him where he lives, but he’d told him about work. Had had Ty come pick him up there a few times. He drops the hockey pads he’d been shelving when he sees him, and then scrambles to pick them up. Ty asks him what time he gets off, and when Pat does, locking up the store behind him and saying bye to Suzanne, Ty’s there, waiting for him.

Pat goes home with him. Silently, follows Ty to the condo he’s spent so much time at in the past months, and when Ty opens his mouth to talk, kisses him. Shuts him up with his mouth and hands, taking and appreciating in the way he hadn’t been able to the last time they’d had sex. He lays Ty out on his bed, lays down fluttery kisses over his mouth, his throat, his chest, flicks his tongue over Ty’s nipples, kisses Ty’s mouth again when he tries to talk. By the time Pat gets to his stomach, Ty is gasping for air, and he’s gotten the message, the only sound in the room Ty’s harsh breaths.

When he sucks down Ty’s cock all the way to the base – something he’s take pride in learning so fast – Ty lets out a noise like he’s been punched. His fingers find their way into Pat’s hair, tug at the curls, half-away, half closer, deeper, and Pat hums to let him know that it’s okay. So Ty fucks his mouth, slowly, careful not to choke Pat, and Pat pretends like the tears that spill over the corners of his eyes are just because of the way Ty’s cock is bumping against the back of his throat.

He swallows down Ty’s come, takes the time to swirl it around on his tongue and taste, and when Ty drags him up his body to kiss, Pat kisses all the way from his sternum up to his throat again, replacing the taste of come with that of salty skin. He straddles Ty’s middle to stop him from moving away and kisses his mouth, sweet and long, pushing Ty’s hands away when they try to unbuckle his belt. Just the brush of Ty’s hand against Pat’s straining cock through the jeans is enough to make him shiver, but Pat doesn’t want to ruin this.

His arousal is like a sharp, burning want that he wants to let slowly recede on its own. And it’s not like Pat doesn’t have experience with denying himself things that his body wants. He looks down at Ty and presses his thumb into the corner of Ty’s mouth. Licks his own lips nearly subconsciously.

“I love you,” he says again, like last time. “But it’s going to go away. And you’re going to get over me too.”

“But-“ Ty protests, eyes widening. “Pat, we’ve got to talk. You’ve got to talk to me.”

Pat gets up, walks away from the bed while Ty props himself up on his elbows, incomprehension written all over his face. Pat runs a hand across his face. It’s not that he’d planned this, but. But if Pat’s going to go back into the world of drugs, he can’t drag Ty with him. They’re over, and even if there was a way to fix everything – if Ty agreed to stop doing drugs for him, if he was okay with everything about Pat – then Pat still wouldn’t want him around for this. And that’s if Ty actually wants to get back with him enough to take on all of Pat’s baggage.

Chances are, he wants to forget everything that happened, and all of what Pat has said. Or still doesn’t believe what Pat told him about his past. He came to find Pat, sure, but it doesn’t mean anything. And Pat can do more than deny himself an orgasm. Denying himself a willing Ty, that’s the sort of thing that should work for hardening him, right? Let him come across as cool and composed to whatever cartels are active here, and not some kid that wants to take all of his supply at once.

“No I don’t,” he says. He looks at Ty, already sorry for what he’s going to say, but hardening his gaze anyway. Puts a lock on his emotions. “I wanted to have sex with you. I did. I still don’t owe you anything, and if you wanted something more from me, then that’s too bad for you.”

Ty reaches for the comforter, covering himself up with it like Pat rejecting him a second time while he’s naked is too much. His eyes are wide and dark, and another flash of hurt passes over his face. The curl of shame at the back of Pat’s neck makes him let out a breath.

“I’m sorry. You’re bad for me, and you don’t want someone like me in your life. I don’t want _you_ in _mine_. So- I’m gonna go. And I’d appreciate if you didn’t come back to my workplace.” He leers, an ugly, mean thing. “Unless you want to fuck my face again. Then, by all means.”

“Fuck you,” Ty says, voice shaking.

“Yes, that’s what I just propositioned,” Pat says coolly.

“Get the hell out of my condo,” Ty spits.

Pat shrugs. He turns around and picks up his coat and shoes at the entrance again before walking out, hands buried deep in his pockets. The night air is ice cold, and Pat’s coat is too thin, but it feels fitting. He doesn’t cry. Instead, he steels himself, makes everything inside him cold too.

It’s a one and a half hour walk back to his place, but he doesn’t take the EL. Instead thinks of Ty, of how much Pat is going to miss him. It’s weird, because this feels like closure, even though Pat lied to Ty, even though he pretended he didn’t care, didn’t want him, and hurt him just so Ty would stay out of his life. He hopes that bitterness against him will be enough to keep Ty away from people like him. That he’ll stay with other rich college kids, have a good life. There’s something self-indulgent about thinking like that, making him the selfless hero, sure, but Pat likes this end of the story better.

He’s going to try and get himself out of the hole he’s in by all means necessary, and he’s going to control himself through it. This life, trying to meet ends and slipping at every given opportunity, it’s not something he can do. How can it be worth it to go to college, get a part-time job, when the first contact he has to drugs in ten months makes him go bankrupt? He needs the money, needs a safety net. Right now he has nothing.

So he goes out to find his dealer the next day, Frank, and chats with him for a while, until Frank realises that Pat isn’t going to buy anything from him. When Pat gets around to asking about a job, he laughs, wonders how the hell Pat went from druggie to suddenly wanting to deal, and doesn’t he know that dealers don’t do drugs? Pat smiles pleasantly, denies ever having been addicted, and would Frank please just pass along the message? Frank says yes, that Pat should come back next week, and Pat nods.

Then he goes to find another dealer to ask. And another, the one he’d bought crack from the first time. He grins at the guy like a shark, aware that he doesn’t like Pat, and gets him to pass the message along anyway after learning that he’s called Tony. Like one of Pat’s hockey guys. If he can call them his. Probably not anymore.

He doesn’t get an answer before the end of the week-end, but then Tony’s calling him up as Pat walks by, and brings Pat to this scary-looking dude that asks Pat about his qualifications. It’s the first time Pat has a job interview in organised crime, and it’s really fucking weird, but he seems to be convincing enough, or maybe they just need new people, because by the end of it, the guy gives Pat a phone number, a bag of heroin and a week to get rid of it.

It takes Pat a total of four days.

Granted, he doesn’t do much else, sticks to the corners he’s assigned, but stays longer than he would if he had another full-time activity. But with how he’s worked practically full-time the week before, he can’t do more hours at his part-time job right now. Maximum hours or some bullshit. Otherwise they’d have to pay him like a proper employee, and they can’t afford that. Pat might actually have to find himself another full-time job to justify to his bank how he’s making money.

Going back to school is always another possibility, but Pat hasn’t been in close to a month, and that means he’s definitely failing the semester already. He doesn’t see the point of going back. Maybe instead he can work at paying this year’s tuition back to his parents, and just- just make money. Get to know people that are like him instead of getting involved with kids like Ty or any of the guys he played hockey with. They have nothing in common, and Pat can’t be like them. Can never be like them.

It’s different for his sisters, he’s certain of that too. What sets him apart isn’t that he grew up poor – it’s that he grew up in crime. And if there’s one thing that he tried to make sure of in all those years he stole and dealt in Buffalo, it was that his sisters were provided for. Maybe not well, and not at all during his time in Win East, but as much as a teenager could. So while they know of crime and poverty, they’ve only really been part of the latter themselves. Pat hopes that when Erica goes to college next year, she’ll manage to fit in better than he has.

It becomes his new routine, the dealing, and most of the time he even manages to deal things that aren’t cocaine. He doesn’t touch his pipe again, leaves it where it is, on his night stand, and watches with satisfaction as it slowly starts to accumulate dust. Sometimes he feels like dying, curled up in bed and shaking, and then he’ll look over and see the dust on the pipe, and it’ll make him feel better. A little. Not enough not to make himself throw up in the bathroom (because his brain somehow decided that maybe he’d get rid of the cravings that way), but better still.

It’s all a good distraction from thinking about Ty at least, and Pat doesn’t hear from him or see him again at all. He _had_ actually been curious to see if Ty would want to keep sleeping with him after Pat offered, but then he’d done it in such a way that he doesn’t think Ty’s pride would let him do so. Which sucks, in the sense that Pat soon remembers why being gay had been banished from the realm of his possibilities when he’d joined Win East. The homophobia.

Not that Pat hangs out with a lot of people, really. He seems to be on the lowest level of a chain of command that’s bigger than anything he’s worked for before, which means that there’s no street community, no group of people who all more or less know each other. Mikey actually noticed when Pat’s addiction got worse, back then. Here in Chicago, whoever Pat’s boss even is probably doesn’t know Pat exists.

It’s lonely, is the thing. Lonely and rough, and Pat wonders if he’s ever going to stop wanting whenever someone hands him a bag of cocaine. He tries to deal other things most of the time, gets familiar with heroin, and angel dust, and weed, always weed. But when he’s working, he’s usually alone, and the people he sells to don’t usually stick around for a chat. His roommates don’t look like they’re kicking him out soon anymore, but they’re not talking to him either, and at work at the shop he’s usually busy. Suzanne is nice, but there’s only so much small talk you can do.

Going home, Pat doesn’t have anyone to spend free time with. Nobody who would _want_ to spend their free time with him. He doesn’t have any contact to his old friends from Buffalo. Not even his sisters are a good option here, not when he can’t admit to them that he’s back to dealing, that he dropped out of school. It’s not something he can tell his family before he can somehow make up for it, gather enough money for.

After a few months, Pat starts developing a sort of craving for that too, just people, human warmth. Someone to hold him, or even someone to laugh with and relax around. He breathes through the nights and doesn’t sleep, wanting. He’s always wanting.

It’s closer to the end of June before anything notable happens again, into longer days, shadows that seem to extend between the buildings forever while the heat rises. It’s a different heat than Buffalo, even if both cities have a body of water to control the temperature, and Pat feels sticky and uncomfortable if he has to stand in the sun for too long. He does anyway, and it’s towards the end of a long, warm shift, when the night has finally truly fallen, that he spots the man coming towards him with a crazed look in his eyes.

Pat watches him come, warily, and his fingers tighten around the knife that’s always in his front pocket. Maybe this guy’s an addict, and he wants some of Pat’s stash. Pat gets his fair share of people begging him for drugs, and every time, he’s reminded of how that could have been him. Of how he can _feel_ the pain they’re feeling, and yet he’s using it for profit. They always look wild, always look gaunt. This guy, though, Pat isn’t sure. He’s too well-dressed, too well-built, despite the harassed look in his eyes. Pat doesn’t know, just squares his shoulders, and waits for the guy to stop in front of him and say what he wants.

Except that that’s not what happens. Instead, he finds himself suddenly slammed back against the wall by the throat, large fingers pressing down on Pat’s windpipe, and it knocks the wind out of him, in every conceivable way.

Immediately, his reflexes kick in and he’s got his knife out, driving it into the man’s forearm in the hope that he’ll let go. He’d seemed like he was going to ask Pat something, once he’d had him pinned, but that seems unimportant right now. Panic is flooding Pat’s senses, every cell in his body screaming for air, and the guy is still choking him, and his attempts at drawing in air just make his chest constrict painfully.

“Fucking bitch,” the guy curses at the impact, but he must be used to street fights, because all it seems to do is tighten his hold on Pat’s throat, like he’s dropping more of his weight on him.

Pat’s vision is blurring at the edges and he thinks he might be making helpless sounds, and the effort it takes for him to draw the knife out before the guy rips it out from under his grip. But everything in his body is sending signals of alarm, saying that yes, he’s going to die if he doesn’t get out of this _right now_ , so he puts his entire weight into kicking the guy right in the groin, away from him. This time, it’s enough for the grip around Pat’s throat to relax and he gulps down blissful air, wheezing like he’s dying.

There’s no one in sight, no backup, and the guy barely staggers before reaching into his own pocket, reaching for a gun.

Fuck.

Pat throws himself at him, full-body tackling the guy, and yeah, he’s definitely not as heavy as his attacker, but it’s still enough to send him crashing down _hard_. There’s stars still dancing in front of Pat’s eyes, adrenaline thrumming through his veins, and he doesn’t take any time to think, instead follows his instincts and rams the knife into the guy’s chest while he’s still on the ground. Stabs him once, twice, and then a third time when the guy’s arm twitches.

Then he stumbles back. He gets onto his feet, somehow, away from the body on the ground so he can hold himself up with a hand against the wall and just try to regain his breath, somehow. He’s heaving, throat like sandpaper, every inhale hurting like it’s rasping against raw skin, but fuck, it’s good.

He steps back towards the guy, really looks at him. A large nose, brown, short hair. Eyes, open and unseeing, red still spreading on the white of his dress shirt, dark in the orange light of the street lights. A gun in his hand. Clearly, undeniably dead. Pat pushes at his side a little with the tip of his shoe, just testing, and yeah, there’s no reaction. He knows, though, that the guy still has to be warm, sees the blood slowly spreading on the hot pavement. It’s strange, really, how little shock Pat feels, seeing him like that.

It’s the first time he’s killed someone.

It’s not the first time he’s seen a dead body though, not the first time he’s been in the presence of a murder. Not the first time he’s stabbed someone either. And yet, this is different, because it’d been all Pat. He doesn’t know the guy’s name, doesn’t know what he wanted from him at all. When he rubs his throat, the skin is sensitive there, and he can tell it’s going to bruise. He’ll have to find a way to cover that up that doesn’t involve a scarf in summer for his normal job.

He’s surprised that it even took him that long to get into a fight since he started dealing again. March to June, that’s a whole 4 months with nothing more than a few altercations with addicts. Definitely a record when compared to his time in Win East.

Pat watches the slack face of the man on the ground. He feels empty, adrenaline slowly starting to recede. He feels unable to move away. He should do something about the body, maybe find out who this person is. If anyone sees, Pat is screwed. Forcing himself to take a breath, get back out of the numb cloud that’s dancing at the back of his head, he walks around the body, leans down, grabs the man by his underarms. He drags him to the closest alley, into the shadows, praying that no one will be watching from their window and recognise his face.

He eyes the blood spots still in the street next to them. There’s no way he can cover this up on his own. He’s alone, and there has to be some of his DNA on the guy, somewhere. Pat’s too far from home to somehow drag him here. He could get a bag and drop him in a dumpster, but- He shivers. He feels weird all of the sudden, disgusted with himself. Not with killing the man, but how little he’s freaking out about it. What sort of person has he become that his main concern when killing someone he doesn’t know is whether there’s a dumpster nearby?

He shakes his head, presses a thumb to his throat to stave off the nausea. Then he pulls out his phone and calls his drug provider, Al. He’s fairly sure that there’s got to be people who know how to deal with bodies in this organisation. Even if he doesn’t know which organisation it is. They might decide that they’ll let him take the fall for it, since he’s really not all that important to them, but Pat will deal with that when it happens. Run away, leave Chicago. Start anew somewhere else, maybe. He blows out a breath.

“Dude tried to choke me so I killed him,” he says when he gets the guy on the phone. “Need help getting rid of the evidence.”

“A junkie?” Al asks, sounding vaguely irritated.

“Nah. Or at least doesn’t look like one. Dressed all fancy, way too healthy. Didn’t even try to talk to me before attacking.”

Well, he thinks the guy might have said something as he was choking him, but Pat had cut that a little short, too busy getting out of that situation.

“Where are you?” Al asks next, sounding thoughtful, and then says that people will be on their way, and Pat should probably head home now and make sure he doesn’t have any evidence left on him.

Pat’s a little suspicious, because this sounds too easy, but maybe this is a guy they’d been looking for. He doesn’t really have any better options anyway.

So he does as he’s told. Before he leaves the crime scene, however, and after a moment of consideration, he picks up the gun. Slides it into his back pocket. He wipes his hands on the guy’s shirt, and then he’s off, keeping his head down and taking on a quick enough stride that he’ll be gone fast, but not so quick he’d look suspicious. Like he’s running away.

He doesn’t have a gun, doesn’t want to bother with getting a permit or buying one, even if he could probably afford one with his earnings from the past months. This is easier, and it’s loaded. He probably could have searched the guy for money too, but he didn’t want to spend too much time there, and it’s safer that way. Since apparently he’s a murderer now, on top of a crackhead and a drug dealer, he might as well have a gun for self-defence. Better than his old knife for sure. Which he’ll have to find a way to clean at home without alerting his roommates.

He feels dirty when he goes to bed that night. Stares at the bag he knows the heroin is stashed in. Wonders if it’s any good. If he’d be able to control himself taking it.

He’s still not freaking out, and it’s making him worse about himself, because aren’t you supposed to be upset when you kill someone? He took another person’s life. Half an hour after getting home, he’d gotten a text confirming that everything was taken care of, and his first reaction had been plain relief. He cares about himself, cares about what it means about him. If his family knew, they’d never talk to him again. But the man himself? There’s nothing there.

Pat wonders when he stopped having empathy.

 

~~~

 

The first time, Pat meets Cirone, he’s 18.

It feels like a dream. One moment he’s at his job at the sports shop, the next he’s being called up by Al to tell him he’s going to meet “the boss”. Of the mafia.

Pat’s working for the Chicago mob.

He doesn’t really know how the hell that happened. It sounds way cooler than he feels, being a member of the mob, and it’s also a hell of a lot scarier, because sure, Pat’s been in a gang, but this is so much bigger. The stakes are so much higher.

And apparently, the guy Pat killed was some sort of big guy who defected from the mob, or betrayed some secrets, something like that, and they’re _grateful_ that Pat got him. Jesus. Pat doesn’t even know what to think of that, because it’d been chance. Complete chance. It’s not like he’d _sought out_ the guy to kill him.

That doesn’t seem to matter though, and the next day, Pat is brought up the stairs of an office building, and into the office of the head of the Chicago mob.

Al had told him to wear his best clothes for it, but Pat doesn’t _own_ good clothes, so he’d gone to a store and bought himself a suit with his drug money, feeling guilty at even the thought of spending that much money on something as material as _clothes_. He’s still trying to figure out a way to get some of the money back to Buffalo that doesn’t involve handing hundreds in cash to his bank or sending them in an envelope, but that doesn’t mean he’s keeping the money for himself.

You don’t joke around with the mob, though, and Pat’s pulling at the sleeves of his jacket nervously when he gets called inside, wondering if maybe they’re a little too long. His hair probably needs cutting too, and he’s just- he’s shabby, feels shabby, especially when he steps into the office and it’s all dark polished wood and bling. The room itself looks straight out of a movie, and Pat has to stop himself from gaping at it.

Behind the desk there’s a man, looking like he might be in his forties, somewhere around Pat’s dad’s age. He’s got dark eyes, double Pat’s weight, and his hair is shorn short to hide a receding hairline. Even his suit looks more expensive than Pat’s life is probably worth. Not that Pat knows anything about suits. Resisting the urge to pull more on his sleeves, he straightens up, squares his shoulder.

“Come on in,” the man says, and he’s smiling, lazily measuring up Pat from head to toe.

Everything in him exudes comfortable confidence, from the way his hands are folded over his knees to the curl of his mouth. And yet, he looks _ordinary_. He’s not visibly muscular, and there’s wrinkles on his face that clearly come from laughing a lot. He could be someone’s kindly uncle.

He could also have Pat killed at the snap of a finger. Just because he doesn’t look the part of some shady crime lord doesn’t mean that he isn’t. Pat is too aware of that. And, well. He’s not in a setting where he could ever doubt that the man in front of him is important. Or that he could eat Pat for breakfast and enjoy it. Pat clears his throat uncomfortably.

“Sir,” he says, not quite sure what the protocol is here as he steps towards the desk.

“I’m Jason Cirone,” Cirone introduces himself. “Have a seat, Patrick.”

Carefully, Pat pulls himself a chair. He’s not really surprised that the person who’s apparently his boss knows his name, at least not now that he’s apparently done his dirty business for him, but it still sends his heart racing. It makes him think of all the other things that these people could know about him if they only did their research. If they’re the mob, they probably have ways to find out things like that. Find the things he’s done, every person he’s ever loved. Find out where his family lives, and that Pat would do anything to keep his sisters safe.

“Thank you. Sir.”

Cirone’s smile widens. He looks a little bit like a toad, even if he’s not quite as ugly. He’s fairly average, looks-wise. Patrick forces himself to stay still and meet his gaze. It’s mostly bravado, but he gets the feeling that bravado is all that he has here, faced with someone so incredibly outside of Pat’s league. Nervously, he licks his lips. Cirone’s eyes track the movement.

“So I hear you’ve done us quite the service,” Cirone says pleasantly. “Who knows where Bragnalo would be by now if you hadn’t caught him?”

Pat assumes that that’s the name of the man he killed. He still doesn’t really know what he’s done to anger the mob, and it’s probably better that way. After a sleepless night, he’d come to the conclusion that this was for the best. Know less, feel less. It’s not a person he’s killed. Just a pawn, a threat he eliminated, and a stroke of luck all at once. As for where he would have gone, who knows? Pat doesn’t know until where the sphere of influence of the Chicago mob goes.

“Let it not be said that Jason Cirone doesn’t pay his debts,” Cirone says, and ah, this is where the talk of a reward comes in. Pat wonders what they could give him. What they think he’d want. Or if it’ll just be a “reward” in name only. “I’m feeling generous, Patrick. Name your favour and I’ll make sure you’ll have it. After all, we both have been lucky in this matter, and luck pays off.”

Pat has to fight to keep his facial expression under control, because- a favour? What kind of favour? What sort of thing can he even ask the head of the mob? He doesn’t know how this works, doesn’t know what the rules are. Does he ask for pocket change, or does he ask for a villa? What’s expected of him here?

Pat’s mind is working a thousand miles an hour, just trying to figure this out. Because he can’t fuck this up. He wants Cirone to respect him, see him as more than just a beggar, but doesn’t want to ask for something that would be too much either. As for too little, and it’ll be insulting, ask for too much, and it’ll come across as greedy. It’s all about impressions, and he doesn’t want to make a bad one. Not on a person with this much power over him. The person who also indirectly provides his paychecks.

And that’s when it hits him. What he has to ask to make sure he not only stays in the game, but earns some of Cirone’s respect. He leans back in his chair slowly.

“I’m sure you could make use of someone lucky for more than dealing drugs, sir.”

He keeps his voice measured, open-ended, lets Cirone make what he wants of it. It’s clear enough what Pat is asking. He’s just hoping he’s not signing up for more than he’s ready to do. A promotion in the mob could mean a hell of a lot of thing, if you go from Pat’s imagination and what he knows from street gangs. There’s a lot of things he probably has no idea about.

From the way Cirone smirks, though, he thinks his request was the right one to make.

“Ambitious, are you?” Cirone asks.

Pat shrugs. Pretends to look around a little. “Well, you do have a nice office.”

Cirone outright laughs at that, and Pat just smiles back angelically, like he just didn’t make a jab at his boss’ job. Jesus. It’s a good thing that Cirone has sense of humour. But maybe it’s also how non-threatening Pat is that makes this so funny. The baby-face, wild curls and lack of experience. Either way, it’s a win.

“That I do,” Cirone chuckles. He smiles at Pat. “How old are you, Patrick?”

“Legal to drive and carry a gun,” Pat immediately shoots back.

“But not to drink, I assume.”

“Funny how the law works, sometimes,” Pat says, tilting his head to the side slightly.

They both know that the law isn’t their biggest concern here anyway. Or, well, it is, but not in terms of following it. More when it comes to going around and transgressing it. The law really isn’t something Pat has a lot of respect for.

“And do you know how to shoot one?” Cirone asks. Pat blinks, caught in the middle of his train of thought. Cirone folds his hands under his chin and leans closer over his desk. “A gun, Patrick.”

Right. That’s a pretty relevant question. Although Pat doesn’t really like the perspective of getting upgraded to a job where he has to use a gun on the regular. If it makes him more money, that’s always good, because he’s definitely nowhere close to paying back his debts yet, much less provide for his sisters, but.

“I will, if you need me to,” he says.

He doesn’t know how to shoot a gun. Has tried it a couple of times, for fun, back in Win East, but that’s years ago now. If he needs to use a gun on the job, he’ll have to actually go to a shooting range and learn. But he knows that he can do it, has enough trust in his accuracy and hand-eye coordination that it shouldn’t be too challenging. At least not when it comes to the technical aspects of it.

“Good.” Cirone’s gaze sharpens on him. Still smiling kindly, but definitely appraising Pat’s form and trying to decide what to make of him. Pat refrains from chewing on his lips again. It’s really a habit he needs to get rid of. “I think I’ll be able to find a way to use you.”

Pat nods, letting out a silent breath.

“I’m looking forward to it, sir.”

And that’s how he becomes an actual member of the Chicago mob.

He still has some heroin left when Al calls him up to come and meet with Alfonso, who’s going to be his new direct superior, and he probably would have taken it if it had been crack, but he doesn’t in this case. He just throws the heroin a dark look and sells the rest anyway. Extra cash for him. As it is, after four months of dealing, he’s building up quite the comfortable little sum. He’s looking forward to making it bigger if anything else.

And it’s good that he admitted to Cirone between thinly veiled words that he doesn’t know how to handle a gun, because he gets hooked with the proper documentation for getting a gun permit, gets told that nobody will be asking questions. They don’t. Next thing Pat knows, he’s at the gun range practicing his aim, just in case, and wondering what the hell they’re going to do with someone like him. He lets it drop with Alfonso that he’s pretty good at negotiating, just in case they’re still thinking about that.

What does end up happen, is that he gets taken along for a classic intimidation job, which he does with a guy called Felice, who’s about ten years his senior. It’s not something Pat’s never done, except that this time it’s not about drugs – it’s reminding a restaurant owner of who his allegiances go to, and why he really shouldn’t delay his payments to Cirone like that. They play a classic good cop bad cop, mafia version, where Pat is all friendly explanations of how surely, it must all be a misunderstanding, while Felice inspects his gun like he’s bored. The owner looks like he’s about to cry within two minutes of it, and Pat and Felice share a pint on the way out.

He does a second one at the local union, where he chats some of the workers up, makes himself known, and reminds them of a few key ideas that the mob has been trying to press with them. Sure, unions don’t really have all that much power left compared to times under Al Capone, but they’re still there, and they’re still corruptible, as long as the mob doesn’t go against the workers’ interests.

Pat shows up there three days in a row, and it’s more interesting than he’d expected it to be, because these are people he can relate to a hell of a lot better than college students, even if they’re mostly older than him, and it’s just fun, meeting new people, trying to get them to like him. As much as Pat knows how to make himself hated – by his friends and family, among others – he still likes the challenge of a new environment more, and all the little plays he can put in to charm people. Play up the brashness, look non-threatening, easy smiles that don’t look like he’s making fun of people.

It’s why his favourite part of dealing had always been finding new clients. He loves convincing people of things and making them feel like they’re following the suggestion of a friend, or maybe of some stupid but harmless kid they just met. It’s not usually things that work out well in said people’s favour, especially when it comes to drugs, but then that’s what marketing is about too, and that’s completely legal. Convincing people to buy your shit is the same, and it’s always going to cost them money. Pat’s pretty sure that a lot of people are dependent on some of the technology they’re being fed too.

After he has the right people in the union convinced of which line to push against their employer, though, he’s got a new job, and that one’s a lot less savoury. It’s not completely unexpected, but Pat still doesn’t do it light-heartedly, because- because killing someone. Jesus. Killing someone not because they’ve attacked him first, but because his boss wants him to. Pat isn’t even told details for it, or at least not any reasons, and when he does, he feels like a fucking piece of shit for it. He doesn’t say anything, though, and this time, he’s part of the clean-up team, learns some of the ways the mob has to dispose of bodies.

Two days later he’s giving someone’s daughter free drugs so they can have her as leverage against her parents. The day after that, he’s escorting a group of girls Pat is pretty sure are being trafficked, and the only reason he doesn’t protest, is that there’s another three guys with him. One of them is Erica’s age, and Pat has to look away so he doesn’t imagine what her family must feel like. Forces himself to shut off his emotions and see it as a job instead, just a thing that would get done whether Pat was part of it or not. Not wanting to do bad things won’t stop the bad things from happening, so he might as well participate and get the check at the end of the day.

It’s clear that they’re trying Pat out, or maybe testing his skillset, but he doesn’t think he fucks up anywhere too much, so it’s hard to tell what impression they get from him. He hopes that some of the work he’s done that involved, you know, talking, instead of hurting people, will impress enough that he’ll do that more often, but he’s not sure. None of the things he’s done seem like regular jobs anyway – they’re closer to one-off type actions.

He gets to meet people though, and not just those that the mob is trying to corrupt or intimidate. He works with people _from_ the mob, gets to know some of them, and it’s nowhere near the delighted optimism he’d had when he’d joined Win East with Kev, but it’s still good. It’s a lot less lonely, whether he can let them in on anything personal or not. Which he can’t.

He tells every guy who asks about his family that they’re dead, in fact, because he doesn’t want them to get involved into anything. Felice looks all sorry for him when he says so, and Pat shrugs, mumbling about getting kicked out of home and not giving a shit anyway. He won’t get them in trouble that way, not if he can help it. Maybe Cirone found out about them if he did any background checks on Pat, but that’s nothing Pat can help. For the rest of them, he’s covering his tracks.

He finds out that Cirone isn’t actually the head of the mob at some point too, and then feels stupid for it, because of course the boss wouldn’t meet with him. There’s a whole hierarchy he has to learn. Associates at the lowest level - _his_ level – then soldiers, which there are about a dozen of under Cirone. Cirone himself is a caporegime – capo, Alfonso tells him – and he’s the soldiers’ direct superior.

There’s other capos, who each have a number of soldiers, and even more associates. And then over that, there’s the underboss, Joe “the builder”, and the boss John “no nose” DiFronzo. And then some advisor person to the boss. Pat wonders if it’s just the bosses that get these weird nicknames. Not that he comments on it. Or asks if the boss really doesn’t have a nose. He doesn’t want to die. Still, he wonders, and kind of wishes he could call Jessie so she’d make fun of them with him.

By the time Cirone calls him into his office again, he’s had eight different jobs, and over two weeks have passed. He feels on edge, getting pulled from on side to the other like that, but hopes that Cirone asking to see him means that he’ll have found something a little more regular for Pat. With all the different jobs he’s had to do, he’s had trouble showing up to his official job on time, and he’s barely spent any time at home. It’s really not helping with his already poor sleeping and eating patterns. He’s going have to do a library run again soon just to occupy the nights where he _is_ home. Just _knowing_ what’s going to be expected of him next time would probably help.

He’s brushed his hair back properly when he comes to knock on Cirone’s door, tried to tame the curls with some gel, but his suit is still the same slightly too big one from last time, and he hopes that that’s not something that’s going to be held against him. He waits to be called in and then steps into the room, eyes immediately scanning the room again, just in case it’s not only Cirone there.

It is, though, and he looks pleased to see Pat, because he opens up his arm like he’s welcoming back a long-lost friend and saying, “Patrick,” with way more enthusiasm than Pat thinks is probably appropriate. But then Cirone does seem to be quite the exuberant man. Pat’s asked around enough to know that he’s not the only person to have been granted favours or randomly called into office.

“How has life as an associate been treating you?” Cirone asks like a formality.

Pat’s mouth twitches, ever-so-slightly, because Cirone’s gotta know as well as Pat that it’s been a bit of a rollercoaster, but he plays along.

“I’m thriving,” he declares, which seems to greatly amuse Cirone.

“Good, good. Have a seat.”

Pat takes the remaining steps inside the room and sits down on the chair in front of Cirone’s desk again. It’s wooden, and definitely less comfortable than Cirone’s desk chair. He’s absolutely certain that that difference is on purpose. Just one of many ways to remind the visitor that they’re less important than this guy.

“So,” Cirone says, taking a pause just to prove to himself that he has Pat’s attention. He does, obviously. “I’ve been doing some background checks. Or, well-“ he chuckles, “my good friend Alfonso has been. Standard procedure, you’ll understand, of course.”

Pat feels his heart skip a tiny beat. Background checks could mean anything. He knows they must have happened to some extent, but he’d hoped that they wouldn’t go too far. That maybe knowing he wasn’t some sort of double agent for another mob was enough.

“I’m sure there wasn’t anything of interest,” he attempts.

“On the contrary, Patrick. On the contrary.”

Pat’s presses his fingers into the meat of his thigh, trying to calm himself because shit, that’s scary. Fuck. He doesn’t know what it is that they found, if it’s- Is it the drugs? The fact that he’s barely recovering from his addiction? Sure, it’s not something that’s going to be encouraged here, but he’d figured that that information was already out of the bag and that they were fine with it. Cirone hired him after all, didn’t he?

And he can’t be the only person in the mob to have a past with addiction. He doesn’t believe that you can end up in this sort of situation, at his level, without some sort of fucked up shit going down in your life. Never in his dreams would Pat be where he is now if he’d had a normal childhood. If he’d managed to actually stay in school without feeling like a pariah. If he’d never had to steal to eat. Outside of the people that are directly born into crime families, there’s _got_ to be other people like him here. That was the entire point.

“Don’t look so worried,” Cirone continues. Pat bites on the inside of his cheek and smoothes out his face at the best of his ability. “I found what I wanted right here in Chicago.”

“I’m not sure I understand, sir,” Pat says slowly.

Chicago? Pat’s not even been in Chicago for a full year yet. And sure, there could be evidence of relapsing here too, but most of the things he’s worried about are in Buffalo. His family, his old friends. Maybe his allegiance to a gang before that and leaving it could leave a bad impression in terms of where his loyalties lie. But no, Cirone said Chicago. Pat guesses that it’s got to be the drugs then, because there really isn’t that much stuff that’s relevant to the mob about his college life.

“I’d like to take you out for dinner, Patrick,” Cirone says.

Pat has to blink at the sudden subject change, because- where was Cirone going with that? Is he asking Pat to have dinner with him so they can talk about this, or is he letting Pat know that he _knows_ and is now moving on to something else entirely? Pat already assumed that he knew so it’s not like this is a big thing. Except that it is, because Cirone wouldn’t have talked to him about it otherwise. Pat is _so_ confused.

“Purely business of course,” Cirone adds with a velvety smile.

“Of course.”

Although Cirone taking out Pat for dinner does sound kinda weird. Pat doesn’t think bosses take new employees out for dinner one-on-one in normal companies either. Unless this isn’t one-on-one and Cirone wants Pat to meet some people. Networking and such.

“How about Saturday night?” Cirone asks, all business again, and Pat blinks. He doesn’t know if he’s working late that day, but he probably doesn’t have a choice in this. He can’t say no. Boss, mobster, heartless murderer and all that.

“And wear something…” Cirone continues, eyes roaming over Pat’s suit, looking momentarily put out upon. “No, this won’t do at all. Stan will see to that.” He picks up the phone on his desk and immediately starts typing in a number, while Pat watches him, red creeping to his cheeks. Jesus, does he look that bad? “Hello, Stan? Yes. I want you to get a young man here fitted for a suit. Or better, have him made three. Have them ready by tomorrow. Yes, one of my associates.” He pauses, snorting. “Of course. I have standards, you know that. You know how I like them. I’ll be sending the boy down as soon as I’m done with him. Yes, good.” Cirone hangs up again, and look back at Pat with a satisfied look on his face. “Good, now that that’s settled…”

Pat just blinks at him a little disbelievingly. He gets, sort of, that maybe an important mafia person doesn’t want to be seen with someone who looks as much like a street rat as Pat apparently does, but- three suits? And the way Cirone just called the “boy”, this conversation as if he’d had it ten times over with his tailor, it makes Pat feel even cheaper and weirdly more replaceable than getting pushed around between jobs had.

“Sir, there was no need-“ he starts, but Cirone tuts, cutting him off.

“You’ll be asking for Stan at the reception downstairs, will you?

“I-“ Pat cuts himself off. Bites his tongue. “Yes sir.”

Cirone doesn’t seem to want to hear his protest, and if he wants to buy Pat fitted suits, then Pat guesses that that’s a thing that’s going to happen, whether he wants it or not. He swallows down his protests and tries to think of the positives instead. Three free suited suits? That’s pretty dope. Pat had never worn a suit in his life before getting the low-end one he’s currently wearing, and it does make him feel a lot more grown-up. And if he’s working for the mob, he might as well look the part.

So he goes downstairs, gets the suits fitted, and rolls his eyes when Stan complains about how ill-fitting his suit is. It’s better than expressing any of the shame that’s bubbling in his stomach at being reminded of how terribly underneath these people he apparently is, in more than just one way.

He has to move around his work hours to be able to go to the dinner with Cirone, and Suzanne looks more than a little irritated by it, because Pat’s gone from working practically full-time to cancelling hours two days in advance, and, well. It doesn’t promise anything good for his future at the shop. He wonders if he’s going to get fired. That would be unfortunate. But then maybe he can somehow find a way to get “employed” at one of the mob’s money-laundering businesses so he can earn all of his cash in actual bank-acceptable cheques.

He cares more about possibly angering Cirone than he does Suzanne, though, so he apologises to Suzanne, and shows up at the restaurant on time, wearing one of the suits Cirone had made for him. It’s dark blue and feels too tight pretty much everywhere, but what does Pat know? Nothing, apparently. He doesn’t have a tie to go with it, so he doesn’t wear one, just buttons his shirt up and feels weird the entire time he’s getting ready. He’s dressing up for his boss. It’s like- Well, he knows, intellectually, that some people dress up for work. But it’s still weird as fuck.

Even weirder when Cirone gives him a once-over as soon as he gets to the restaurant, nodding to himself like he’s satisfied with what he has to see. Pat feels like a doll that’s being played dress up on. He smiles at Cirone, though, trying to paint a picture of confidence where he feels none, and for a split-second, it feels like Cirone wants to offer him his _arm_ before they go into the restaurant. He doesn’t. Of course he doesn’t. Strictly professional, Cirone insisted.

They go inside, and if Pat still thought that this was going to be a dinner with multiple people, he gets the confirmation then and there that it won’t be the case, seeing what table they’re assigned. Just one on one, isolated enough to not be overheard.

And it looks fucking fancy too, all of this, reminding Pat of exactly how much hasn’t done in his life that people with more money probably have. He’s eaten at a bar, yeah, or some sort of cheap family diner, but a restaurant like this? All fancy white napkins and sparkling wine glasses? It looks like a scene out of a movie. It looks like a waste of money Pat can barely comprehend.

“So, tell me about yourself, Patrick,” Cirone says once they’re sitting down, and it only goes downhill from there.

He asks about Pat’s family, about _school_ , and Pat feels like he’s sitting on hot coals from it. Everything in him is screaming to lie, to let this man know as little about him as possible, but the stakes are oh so completely different than they were when introducing himself to people at college, or even lying to his friends in Buffalo.

He’s had bad experiences with getting caught lying before, is still vaguely traumatised by that time he thought he might go to prison for it as a kid, but this is a man who kills people he disagrees with. Sure, Pat doesn’t think he’ll die for lying once, but. But it’s the same idea as it’s been ever since asking Cirone for that job. He doesn’t want to get on Cirone’s bad side.

He doesn’t want Cirone to find out more than he needs to about his family either. But it’s also hard to estimate what Cirone already knows, what he could find out in the snap of a finger. Pat’s good at lying, knows he could sound believable on pretty much anything, but Cirone has already done a background check on him, and Pat _doesn’t_ know what he knows about him already.

“I don’t talk to my family,” he says carefully.

Cirone twirls around his fork. “I’ve heard that you’ve been telling my men that your family is dead.”

“That’s-“ Pat licks his lips. “They are. To me. They’re still _alive_ , probably in Buffalo, but they’ve been dead to me since the day they kicked me out of the house.”

“They did? How heartless.”

“They didn’t quite approve of my handling of the law,” Pat says, shrugging, smile a little cocky.

He’s screaming inside, of course, because why does Cirone already know what Pat has been telling his subordinates about himself? Why is he asking Pat if he already knows what should be the answer? Or better, why is Pat even surprised? He’s trying to pick up the pieces of his lies here, making them fit together, and he thinks it’s not too bad in this case, but he’s deadly scared that he won’t get away with it as easily the next time.

And with this explanation, at least, he can still make it sound like he can’t be touched through his family. If he doesn’t care about them, they can’t be used against him.

“College isn’t for me,” he says at the next topic change, and Cirone smiles patronisingly.

“You’re so young. My eldest is doing his second year of law school, and I wouldn’t dream of letting him drop out of college so soon.”

“Law, I see,” Pat says, and he has to supress a snort because yeah, actually, he can see how studying law could be useful to a future in the mob. “Well I’m sure if my father was rich and powerful, I would have stayed in college a little longer. But I made do. I’m not unhappy with my situation.”

Like he’s going to tell his boss anything else.

Cirone looks at him curiously. “Do you _want_ to go to college?”

Pat has no idea why they’re talking about this.

“Not really.” Pat shrugs. “It was fun for a few months, but that’s it.”

He doesn’t really let himself think about it. He _can’t_ continue college, so there’s no point letting himself feel bad about it. Sure, if circumstances had been different, Pat _could_ have enjoyed it. Could have spent more time with kids his age, made friends, not been scared of relapse or bankruptcy or being caught by the police. But that’s not how things are, and he’s long learnt to harden his heart against those sorts of emotions. He’s never been jealous of Ty, not really. It’d all just been Pat’s own world clashing with Ty’s in a way that hadn’t worked out.

The server arrives with two identical plates of steak and a bottle of wine, and Cirone smiles, before pouring Pat some. It reminds Pat of their conversation concerning his age. How Cirone had pointed out to him that he wasn’t legal to drink yet. It feels provocative somehow, even if Pat knows that neither of them do things that are legal for a living. He sips at the wine obediently and makes an appreciative sound, like he’s supposed to, even if all wine tastes the same to him.

“Did dropping out and your fallout with your boyfriend have anything to do with each other?” Cirone asks, and Pat promptly chokes on his wine.

He coughs, putting the wine glass back down on the table, and it takes him a few attempts and a couple of tears at the corners of his eyes before he can get himself together again.

Ty’s another person they could hurt him with he realises. Then: _They know I’m gay_. His heart feels like it’s going to jump right out of his chest. He wonders why this is the information Cirone chose to offer up to Pat when he pretended not to know anything else concerning his family and studies. Why Ty? He’s clearly trying to go somewhere with this, and Pat can sense it – can _see_ that Cirone has him cornered, but he doesn’t understand _why_.

“No, it wasn’t-“ Pat shakes his head, clears his throat. “Teenage relationships, you know?”

His laugh sounds hollow even to his own ears. Christ.

He doesn’t actually know much about homophobia in the mob, but he figures that it’s got to be there, at least from his experience. Maybe Cirone wants to use it as blackmail material over Pat? Either way, he’s not going to play up how much his relationship with Ty mattered to him. Pat knows that he was an asshole, and he thinks that he wouldn’t miss Ty as much if he had any real friends, but it still _mattered_. To him at least. He looks down at his plate self-consciously, starts cutting off a piece of the steak.

Cirone hums. “Maybe you should aim for someone older.”

Pat blinks at him.

“I-“ he starts, before his voice dies off.

Cirone is looking at him like he wants to eat him, eyes dropping to Pat’s mouth as soon as Pat’s tongue darts over his lower lip nervously. His grin actually _widens_ when Pat flushes, seemingly unbothered by Pat’s reaction. Like there’s nothing false or wrong in what Pat clearly just assumed. Pat’s let his guard drop. His body language _must_ have told Cirone exactly what his mind jumped to, and yet, Cirone isn’t denying anything.

But he _can’t_ be implying what it seems to be implying. He’s more than double Pat’s age, admitted to having a son that’s _older_ than Pat. Probably has a wife, other kids. He’s Pat’s boss, is well-respected in the mob. He-

With a flash, Pat realises how all of this looks. Wearing the clothes Cirone had made for him, spending the evening at a restaurant together in a setting that’s not just private but _romantic_. He’s here purely because Cirone wants him to be, and he has his hands tied in every way but the literal one. His eyes drop back to his plate, nausea filling him from the inside.

“I think that you have potential, Patrick,” Cirone continues, velvety-sweet. “With my help, you could do a lot of things. You might even make it to soldier very soon. The family is looking to open its ranks. With recommendations from me, there would be no doubt that you would be promoted. I haven’t forgotten your request. And I promised you a favour, didn’t I?”

All that Pat can hear is _with my help_. There’s a price there to be paid. Something that Cirone wants from him, something that Pat has to do to get that help. Pat’s eyes flicker back up to Cirone, trying to picture it. Trying to imagine whether this is a sacrifice he’s ready to make. How big of a sacrifice it would be in the first place.

Cirone isn’t ugly. He’s not particularly handsome either, though, and he still makes Pat think of a toad, a little. He’s corpulent enough that he could easily bodycheck Pat, and the shaved head reminds Pat of his own dad. Which is a really, really terrible comparison to make when he’s trying to imagine whether he could have sex with someone. Pat reaches for his wine glass, willing his hand to be steady, and downs it in one go. Cirone’s eyes are laughing when Pat looks back at him.

“Right,” Pat says. “So what, do I come home with you after this?”

Cirone might be trying to dance around the issue without naming it, but Pat thinks that he might as well be blunt here. There’s no one within hearing range, Cirone made sure of that.

Cirone lets out a bellowing laugh. “Of course not. You don’t even have to answer right away. I was just introducing you to the idea of-“

“My answer is yes,” Pat cuts in.

He raises his chin defiantly, aware that this is probably rude. Cirone hasn’t seemed to mind his cheek up until now, though, and all Pat is doing is giving him what he wants more easily than Cirone had expected. But Pat doesn’t _want_ to spend time thinking about it, freaking out about it. It won’t do him any good, and he doesn’t think that it’d change his decision in the end either. He’d just feel a lot more awful about it. If Pat has to do this, he’d rather jump into it of his own free will.

“Yes?” Cirone asks, looking more intrigued than put off by Pat’s reply.

“Yes,” Pat confirms.

He feels shaky on the inside, heart racing, but he holds Cirone’s gaze. Don’t think about it, just go in. It’s not like Pat hasn’t had sex with people he wasn’t attracted to before, and it wasn’t awful. It’d be fine. This can be fine too. He’ll be Cirone’s pet if that’s what Cirone wants from him. It’ll let him rise up in rank quicker, and he knows that a promotion to soldier also means that no one is allowed to kill him without a boss’ permission. That’s definitely an advantage. Position, power, money. He can have sex too if that’s what will get him there.

“Well then,” Cirone says, reaching out to pour Pat some more of the wine. “I suppose you’ll be coming home with me tonight, yes.”

Pat nods.

Cirone fucks him, because of course he does.

He pulls on Pat’s hair a little, jerks him through it. His hands are too big on Pat’s ribcage, but he smells clean, and when Pat focuses on the sensations, he can even produce sounds that’ll convincingly sound like enjoyment. He tries his hand at moaning, like he’s seen some of the girls he’s fucked do, and it makes Cirone curse and pound into him harder, so Pat guesses that that’s something that works.

He doesn’t tell Cirone that he’s never taken a cock before, and Cirone doesn’t seem to notice. Pat’s imagined it, sure, and he’d thought that he and Ty might get there eventually before they’d broken up, but then it hadn’t happened, and Pat thinks- Pat thinks he might enjoy it if it was someone he liked fucking him. It’s not unpleasant. He tilts his hips up experimentally, and it gets Cirone to hit something inside him that draws a much more sincere gasp out of Pat’s mouth.

Afterwards, they lie in bed together, breathless and sweaty, and Pat makes the decision that if he’ll be doing this, he’ll try to make Cirone fall in love with him too. Right now, Cirone’s only attracted to him because Pat’s young and he likes Pat’s face, or something, but Pat wants to stay in the mob, and he won’t be able to do that if he gets discarded like a broken toy after Cirone’s done with him. No, he’ll milk him for every benefit that’s possible.

And eventually, he’ll get to sit in Cirone’s office in his place.

 

**Author's Note:**

> I'm on [Tumblr](http://eubiass.tumblr.com/)
> 
>  **Warnings:**  
>  \- Mental health: Pat's dad is clinically depressed and struggles to keep a job. Neither his wife not Pat, as the narrator, are as supportive as they should be of this.  
> \- Substances: Pat's mother is described as an alcoholic very early on. Pat himself consumes weed and crack at a very young age, and quickly becomes addicted. He goes through withdrawal and goes back on crack multiple times throughout the story. There is the explicit description of a crack overdose that does not kill Pat.  
> \- Violence: Pat gets beaten up by gang members as part of his initiation. Two other fights are described, one in which someone is shot in the head, and the other in which Pat stabs a man to death. There is mention of blood, but no detailed descriptions of gore.  
> \- Cheating: There is brief mention of Pat cheating on an OFC.  
> \- Dubcon: Pat engages in sexual relations with his boss inside the mob. He chooses to do so willingly, but there is no real option for him to say no. Pat's boss is more than twice his age at that point, although Pat is legal.


End file.
